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ENCYCLOPEDIA 



OF 



SACRED THEOLOaT 



ITS PRINCIPLES 



BY 

ABRAHAM KUYPER, D.D. 

FREE UNIVERSITY, AMSTERDAM 

TRANSLATED FROM THE DUTCH 

By rev. J. HENDRIK DE VRIES, M.A. 

WITH AX INTRODUCTION BY 
PROFESSOR BEXJAMIX B. WARFIELD, D.D., LL.D. 

OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 



r^.x ^^^0^ 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1898 




11% 



Xt 



13997 



COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



2n 



189b. 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 






J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smitt 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



The translation of this Theological Encyclopedia was 
undertaken by appointment of the author, with whose co- 
operation also the proof-sheets have been read. In the 
original, this work consists of three volumes, the contents of 
which are stated in Dr. Warfield's "Introductory Note." 
The volume here presented contains the first fifty-three 
pages of Vol. I. of the original, and Vol. II. entire. The 
full definition of " Principium Theologiae " being given on 
page 341, the word " principium " as a technical term has 
been retained in its Latin form throughout. Grateful thanks 
are due to Professor B. B. Warfield, D.D., LL.D., for valu- 
able assistance given. And it may also be stated here, that 
profound regard for the author, and firm faith in the 
standards of Calvinism which he so masterfully defends in 
the Netherlands, are the motives that have inspired to the 
end this effort of the 

TRANSLATOR. 

Princeton, N.J., June 20, 1898. 



PREFACE 

The original work, a part of which only is here given in 
English, consists of three volumes. These together form a 
systematic whole. The first volume contains an introduc- 
tion to Theological Encyclopedia, included in pages 1-55 of 
this translation. This is followed by a history of Theologi- 
cal Encyclopedia of about five hundred pages. No such 
history had ever been written before. Brief, summary re- 
views are given in some encyclopedias, but no history of 
this department as such can be found. And yet the need of 
it is imperative for the sake of a broad study of the position 
which Theological Encyclopedia at present occupies in the 
domain of science. Moreover, the writer was impelled to 
undertake this task because the general history of Theology 
has for the most part been interpreted in a sense which does 
not agree with what he deems should be understood by 
Theology. In writing so extensive a history of Theologi- 
cal Encyclopedia he had a twofold purpose in view : on 
the one hand of conveying a fuller knowledge of Encyclo- 
pedia of Theology than had thus far been furnished, and 
on the other hand of giving a review of the entire history 
of Theology from his view-point. Upon this introductory 
volume follows Volume II., which is here given entire in 
the English translation. And then follows the third vol- 
ume, almost equally large, in which the separate theological 
departments find their logical division and interpretation 
according to the author's principles. In this third volume 
the principles previously developed are brought to their 
logical sequence, showing that only in the full acceptance 
of the proper principle can a pure and correct development 
be discovered for all these departments of Theolog)'. 

vii 



viii PKEFACE 

The author does not hesitate to say frankly that in the 
writing of this work he occupies the Calvinistic view-point, 
though this is not to be taken in an exclusively dogmatical 
sense. There are primordial principles which are funda- 
mental to Calvinism, and these only he defends. He is no 
Calvinist by birth. Having received his training in a con- 
servative-supernaturalistic spirit, he broke with faith in 
every form when a student at Leyden, and then cast himself 
into the arms of the barest radicalism. At a later period, 
perceiving the poverty of this radicalism, and shivering with 
the chilling atmosphere which it created in his heart, he 
felt attracted first to the Determinism of Professor Scholten, 
and then to the warmth of the Vermittelungs-theologie, as 
presented by Martensen and his followers. But if this 
warmed his heart, it provided no rest for his thought. In 
this Vermittelungs-theologie there is no stability of starting- 
point, no unity of principle, and no harmonious lif e-interpre- 
■ tation on which a world- view, based on coherent principles, 
can be erected. In this state of mind and of heart he came 
in contact with those descendants of the ancient Calvinists, 
who in the Netherlands still honor the traditions of the 
fathers ; and it astonished him to find among these simple 
people a stability of thought, a unity of comprehensive in- 
sight, in fact a world- view based on principles which needed 
but a scientific treatment and interpretation to give them a 
place of equal significance over against the dominant views 
of the age. To put forth an effort in this direction has 
from that moment on been his determined purpose, and 
toward this end he has devoted a series of studies in The- 
ology, in Politics, and in Esthetics, part of which have 
already been published, and part of which are embodied in 
the acts of the Second Chamber of the States-General. To 
all this, however, there was still wanting that unity which 
alone can give a concentric exposition of the nature of theol- 
ogy, and to supply this want he set himself the task of writ- 
ing this extensive Theological Encyclopedia. Thus only 
was he able to reach the heart of the question. 

That the treatment of the principium of Theology, i.e. of 



PREFACE ix 

the Holy Scripture, is given so much space could not be 
avoided. In all this controversy the Holy Scripture is the 
question at stake, and the encyclopedia that places itself un- 
conditionally upon the Scriptures as its basis cannot find a 
plan until the all-embracing question of the Scriptures has 
been fundamentally solved. 

It is only natural that certain portions of this book should 
bear a severely Dutch stamp. Being an enemy to abstrac- 
tions, and a lover of the concreteness of representation, the 
author could not do anything else than write from the envi- 
ronment in which he lives. In one point only does this 
require an explanation. In this book he speaks of Methodism 
in a way which would have been impossible either in England 
or in America, where Methodism has achieved a Church for- 
mation of its own. For this reason he begs leave to state that 
he views Methodism as a necessary reaction, born from Cal- 
vinism itself, against the influences which so often threaten 
to petrify the life of the Church. As such, Methodism had 
in his opinion a high calling which it is bound to obey, and 
a real spiritual significance. And it becomes subject to seri- 
ous criticism only when, and in so far as, from being a reac- 
tion, it undertakes to be itself an action ; and when, not 
satisfied with imparting a new impulse to the sleeping 
Church, it seeks to exalt itself in the Church's stead. This, 
he thinks, it is not able to do, and hence falls into serious 
excesses. 

In closing this brief preface he begs to offer his sincere 
thanks to the Rev. J. Hendrik de Yries, who with rare 
accuracy of style and language has finished the difficult and 
laborious task of this translation. 

ABRAHAM KUYPER. 

Amsterdam, June 1, 1898. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

It gives me the greatest pleasure to respond to the request 
of my friend, the Rev. J. Hendrik de Vries, — to whom a 
debt of gratitude is due from us all for putting into English 
a section of this valuable treatise, — that I should in a few 
words introduce its author to his American audience. It is 
not often that an opportunity falls to one to make known a 
thinker of Dr. Kuyper's quality to a new circle of readers ; 
and I count it a high honor to have been given this privi- 
lege. For many years now Dr. Kuyper has exercised a very 
remarkable influence in his own country. As leader and 
organizer of the Anti-revolutionary i^arty, and chief editor 
of its organ, De Standaard^ a newspaper which, we are told 
by good authority, occupies not only '' a place of honor, but 
the place of honor among Dutch dailies " ; ^ as founder, de- 
fender, and developer of the Free University of Amsterdam, 
through which the people of the Netherlands are receiving 
an object lesson of the possibility and quality of higher edu- 
cation conducted on Christici n and Eef ormed foundations, free 
from interference from the State ; as consistent advocate in 
the Church of freedom of conscience, confessional rights, and 
the principles of that Reformed religion to which the Dutch 
people owe all that has made them great, and strenuous pro- 
moter of the great end of bringing all who love those princi- 
ples together into one powerful communion, free to confess 
and live the religion of their hearts ; as a religious teacher 
whose instructions in his weekly journal, De Heraut^ are the 

1 Jhr, Mr. A. F. de Savoruin Lohman in De Nederlander of April 1, 1897 
(as extracted in the Gedenkboek, published in commemoration of the com- 
pletion of the first twenty-five years of service by Dr. Kuyper as chief-editor 
of De Standaard, Amsterdam, 1897, p. 89). 

xi 



Xll INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

food of hundreds of hungry souls, whose prelections in the 
Free University are building up a race of theologians imbued 
with the historical no less than the systematic spirit, and to 
whose writings men of all parties look for light and inspira- 
tion ; in fine, as a force in Church and State in whose arm 
those who share his fundamental principles trust with a 
well-founded hope of victory, Dr. Kuyper is probably to-day 
the most considerable figure in both political and ecclesiasti- 
cal Holland. As long as thirteen years ago Dr. Johannes 
Gloel, looking in upon the Church life of Holland from 
without, thought it not too much to say that Dr. Kuyper's 
was the best known name in the land : ^ and though in the 
interval friends have been lost, yet doubtless also friends 
have been made, and assuredly the sharp conflicts which 
have marked these years have not lessened the conspicuous- 
ness of the central figure in them all. It is certainly high 
time that we should make the acquaintance of such a man in 
America. The present volume will, naturally, reveal him to 
us on one side only of his multiform activity. It is a fragment 
of his scientific theological work which it gives us; indeed, 
to speak literally, it is only a fragment of one of his theo- 
logical works, though possibly thus far his most considerable 
contribution to theological science. But the reader will not 
fail to perceive, even in this fragment, evidence of those 
qualities which have made its author the leader of men 
which he is, — the depth of his insight, the breadth of his 
outlook, the thoroughness of his method, the comprehensive- 
ness of his survey, the intensity of his conviction, the elo- 
quence of his language, the directness of his style, the pith 
and wealth of his illustrations, the force, completeness, win- 
ningness of his presentation. 

For anything like a complete estimate of Dr. Kuyper's 
powers and performance there would be needed a tolerably 
thorough acquaintance with the whole political and religious 
life of Holland during the last third of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. It would even be something of a task to undertake a 
study of his mind and work in his literary product, which 

1 Hollands kirchliches Leben, Wtirtemberg, 1885. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE xiii 

has grown to a very considerable voluminousness, and touches 
upon nearly the whole circle of civil and ecclesiastical inter- 
ests of the present-day Netherlands. All that exists is a 
rather superficial and not very correct sketch of his life and 
opinions from the pen of Jhr. Mr. Witsius H. de Savornin 
Lohman.^ It was written, unhappily, nearly ten years ago, 
and Dr. Kuyper has not ceased to live and move in the 
meanwhile ; and its greater part is devoted, naturally, to 
an account of Dr. Ku}^er's political program as leader 
of the Anti-revolutionary party. It may be supplemented, 
however, from the theological side from the sympathetic 
and very informing account to be found in Dr. Hermann 
Bavinck's paper on Recent Dogmatic Thought in the Nether- 
lands^ which appeared a few years ago in the pages of The 
Presbyterian and Reformed Review.^ With this there may 
profitably be compared, by those who like to hear both 
sides of a question, the series of papers on 77ie Netherland- 
ish Reformed Church of the Present by Professor H. G. 
Klein of Utrecht, which are buried in the columns of a 
Reformed journal which used to be published in Austria,^ 
while Dr. Kuyper himself has lifted the veil from many 
of his earlier experiences in a delightful booklet which 
he appropriately calls Confidences.^ With these references 
I may exonerate myself from attempting more here than to 
suggest the outlines of his work on the theological side. 

Dr. Kuyper was born in 1837, and received his scholastic 
training at Ley den, as a student of literature and theology. 
He obtained his theological doctorate in 1863, with a treatise 
on the idea of the Church in Calvin and a Lasco. During 
his university career, when he sat at the feet of Scholten (at 

1 It was published as one of the issues of the series entitled Mannen van 
Beteekenis in Onze Dagen, edited by Dr. E. J. Pijzel, and published at 
Haarlem by H, D. Tjeenk Willink. It is a pamphlet of 72 pages, and 
appeared in 1889. 

2 Issue of April, 1892, Vol. III. pp. 209 sq. 

3 JEvangelisch Beformirte Blaetter aus Oesterreich (Kuttelberg, Oesterr. 
Schlesien, 1891 ; Vol. I. pp. 9 seq.). 

* Confldentie : Schrijven aan den weled. Heer J. H. van der Linden, door 
Dr. A. Kuyper (Amsterdam : Hoveker en Zoon, 1873). Additional sources 
of information are given by both Dr. Bavinck and Dr. Klein. 



Xiv INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

that time in his more conservative period) and Kuenen, lie 
had little clearness of religious insight and felt little drawing 
to theological study, and gave himself, therefore, rather to the 
cultivation of literature under the guidance of Professor de 
Vries. At its close a great change came over him, mediated 
partly by some striking experiences of providential guidance 
in connection with the preparation of a prize-paper which 
he had undertaken, partly by the continued and absorbing- 
study of Calvin and a Lasco to which the preparation of that 
paper led him, and partly by the powerful impression made 
upon him by Miss Yonge's romance. The Heir of Redcliffe^ 
read in this state of mind. The good work thus begun was 
completed under the influence of the example and conversa- 
tion of the pious Reformed people of his first pastoral charge, 
at the little village of Beesd, where he ministered the Word 
from 1863 to 1867. Thus prepared for his work, he entered 
upon it at once con amore^ when he was called in the latter 
year to the Church at Utrecht. From that moment, at 
Utrecht and Amsterdam, in the pulpit and professor's 
chair, in the Chamber of Deputies, and the editorial page 
of his journals, he has unceasingly waged battle for the 
freedom of the Church of God to found itself on the Word 
alone, and to live and teach in accordance with its own free 
confession. 

In his new enthusiasm of faith he went to Utrecht in the 
highest hope, looking upon that city, in which dwelt and 
taught the Coryphseuses of the orthodoxy of the day, as '' a 
Zion of God," and expecting to find in them leaders whom 
he would need but to follow to the reestablishment of the 
Church and of the religious life of the land on the one firm 
foundation of the Word of God. He soon discovered that 
there were limits, in reliance upon the Reformed principles, 
and even in trust in God's Word, beyond which the Apolo- 
getical School of Utrecht was not prepared to go. " I had 
thought to find them," he says,^ " learned brethren, for whom 
the Holy Scriptures, just as they lie, were the authority of 
their lives, — who with the Word for a weapon were defend- 

1 Gedenkboek, etc., as above, p. 68. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE XV 

ing the stronghold of the Netherlandish Jerusalem with un- 
daunted valor ; men who did not merely stand on the wall 
and ward off assaults, but rushed forth from the gates and 
drove off the foe. But what did I find ? Everywhere a cry 
of distressed hearts. Everybody shut up in the hold, with 
no thought of anything beyond a weak defence, watching for 
the shots to fall, and only when they came giving some poor 
reply, while bulwark after bulwark of the faith was yielded 
to the enemy." Such an attitude was intolerable to one of 
Dr. Kuyper's ardent and aggressive spirit. Nor did he find 
more comfort in the Ethical School, although he was by no 
means insensible to the attractions of its " Mediating The- 
ology."^ The weakness and wastefulness of both apology 
and mediation as a means of establishing and advancing 
Christianity he felt, moreover, most profoundly; and, plant- 
ing himself once for all squarely on the infallible Word and 
the Reformed Confessions, he consecrated all his great and 
varied powers to purifying the camp and compacting the 
forces of positive truth. The effect of the assumption of 
this bold, aggressive position was, naturally, to offend and 
alienate the adherents of the more " moderate " schools. 
The followers of Van Oosterzee and D cedes, of de la Saus- 
saye and Gunning, — men who, according to their lights, 
had wrought each a good work in the defence and propaga- 
tion of the principles of the Gospel, — were necessarily left 
behind, where they did not even throw themselves into the 
camp of the enemy. But the result has vindicated not only 
its righteousness, but its wisdom. Not merely as over 
against the forces of more or less open unbelief, but also of 
those timid souls who would fain pitch their tents in neutral 
territory, Dr. Kuyper has raised the banner of unadulterated 

1 In the Preface to the first volume of his Encyclopaedie Dr. Kuyper says : 
"Brought up under the teaching of Scholten and Kuenen, in an entirely 
different circle of theological ideas, and later not less strongly influenced by 
the ' Mediating Theology,' the author found rest neither for his heart nor 
for his mind until his eyes were opened to the depth, the earnestness, and 
the heauty of the Reformed Confession, which has come to us out of those 
spiritually rich days when Calvinism was still a world-power, not only in the 
theological, but also in the social and political, realm." 



xvi INTRODUCTOKY NOTE 

Christianity, and the people of God have flocked to its lead- 
ing. He cannot, indeed, be credited with the creation of 
the Reformed party in the Church, any more than of the 
Anti-revolutionary party in the State. As the year 1849, 
when Groen van Prinsterer was elected to the Lower Cham- 
ber of the States General, may be accounted the formal birth- 
day of the latter, so the year 1842, when the Address of 
Groen and his six companions was laid before the Synod of 
the Netherlandish Reformed Church, praying for the main- 
tenance of the rights of the Reformed Confession against 
the Groningen teaching, may be thought of as the formal 
birthday of the former. But as it is he who has organized 
and compacted the Anti-revolutionary party and led it to its 
present position of power, so it is he to whom is due above 
all others the present strength of the Reformed tendency in 
the religious life and thought of Holland, and to whom are 
turned in hope to-day the eyes of all who truly love the 
Word of God and the principles of the Reformed religion, — 
that "sterling silver," "fine gold," "pure nard," of Chris- 
tianity, as he himself phrases it. 

In the prosecution of his self-chosen task of recovering 
for the Word of God and the principles of the Reformed 
religion their rightful place in the civil and religious life of 
the Netherlands, Dr. Kuyper has made the most vigorous 
and versatile use of every means of reaching the minds and 
hearts of the people. He edits the daily political paper, 
De Standaard^ which he has made a veritable power in the 
land. He edits the weekly religious paper, De Heraut^ and 
discusses in its columns in the most thorough way all live 
topics of theology and religion. He is serving the State as 
a member of the Lower Chamber of the States General. He 
is serving the Church as Professor of Dogmatics in the theo- 
logical faculty of the Free University at Amsterdam. It is a 
matter of course that he has made the freest use also of occa- 
sional discussion and scientific presentation. Political pam- 
phlets, devotional treatises, studies on ecclesiastical topics 
and theological themes, from his pen, have poured from the 
press in an almost unbroken stream. It is a somewhat 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE XVll 

remarkable literary product for a busy man to have pro- 
duced when looked at from the point of view of mere 
quantity; when its quality is considered, whether from the 
point of view of richness of style, fulness of details, wide- 
ness of view, or force of presentation, it is simply a marvel. 
There have been published in our day few discussions of 
civil and social questions more wide-minded and thoughtful, 
few devotional writings more penetrating and uplifting, few 
theological treatises more profound and stimulating. Among 
the more valuable of his theological writings should certainly 
be enumerated the numerous addresses which have been 
given permanence in print, especially the Rectoral addresses 
delivered at the Free University at Amsterdam, several of 
which attain the dimension of short treatises, and are fur- 
nished with an apparatus of notes, while retaining the grace 
of Dr. Kuyper's spoken style. Such, for example, are those 
on Present Day Biblical Criticism^ delivered in 1881, Cal- 
vinism and Art^ delivered in 1888, and the tendency of Pan- 
theizing thought towards the Obliteration of the Boundary 
Lines, and the confounding of things that differ, delivered 
in 1892. Among his more considerable works in scientific 
theology there fall to be mentioned especially, his edition 
of the Opuscala Theologiea of Francis Junius, published in 
1882, his copious commentary, in four volumes, on the Hei- 
delberg Catechism, which bears the title of E Voto Dor- 
draeeno, published 1892-95, his somewhat popular treatise 
on The Work of the Holy Spirit, in three volumes, pub- 
lished in 1888-89, and, doubtless we may say above all, his 
Encyclopaedie der Heilige Grodgeleerdheid in three volumes, 
published in 1894, of which the present volume presents a 
part in English. 

This important work differs from other encyclopedias of 
theology in several particulars. It is marked by the strict- 
ness of its scientific conception of its sphere and the skill 
with which its proper province is discriminated and occu- 
pied. It is marked not less by the comprehensiveness of its 
grasp upon its material, and the thoroughness with which it 
is worked out in its details. It is especially marked by the 



xviii INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

attractiveness of the style in which it is written, which is 
never dull, and often rises into real eloquence. It is marked 
above all, however, by the frankness with which it is based 
on the principles of the Reformed theology, — with which 
it takes its starting-point "from what Calvin called the 
semen religionis^ or the sensus divinitatis in ipsis medullis et 
visceribus hominis infixus^^'' so as to grant at once that it must 
seem as foolishness to him who chooses a different point of 
departure ; and with which also it builds up its structure on 
the assumption of the truth of the Reformed presuppositions, 
and allows at once that it separates itself by so much from 
the point of view of all other systems. With so substantial 
a portion of the work before the reader, however, as this 
volume supplies, it cannot be necessary to speak here of its 
method or quality. It is only needful that the reader should 
remember that he has before him, here, only a portion of the 
whole work. In its completeness it fills three volumes of 
about the size of this one. The first of these is introductory^ 
and treats of the name, idea, and conception of Encyclope- 
dia, and then, more specifically, of the idea, divisions, and 
(most copiously) the history of Theological Encyclopedia, 
The second volume — the one here translated — is the gen- 
eral part, and discusses, as will be seen from its table of 
contents, all those questions which concern the place of 
theology among the sciences, and the nature of theology as 
a science with a " principium " of its own. This volume 
is notable for the extended and thorough discussion it ac- 
cords to the " Principium Theologiae," — involving, to be 
sure, some slight breach of proportion in the disposition of 
the material and possibly some trenching upon the domain of 
Dogmatics, for which the author duly makes his apologies ; 
but bringing so great a gain to the reader that he will 
find himself especially grateful for just this section. The 
third volume contains the treatment of the several divisions 
of theology, which is carried through in a wonderfully fresh 
and original fashion. It is to be hoped that the reception 
accorded the present volume will be such as to encourage the 
translator and publishers to go on and complete the work in 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE xix 

its English form, and thus that this volume will prove to 
be, in the literal sense of the word, but the introduction of 
Dr. Kuyper to English readers. I cannot but feel assured 
from my owm experience that he who reads one treatise 
of Dr. Kuyper's cannot fail to have his appetite whetted for 
more. 

BENJA]\nX B. WARFIELD. 

Princeton, June 16, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

FIRST DIVISION 

THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 

CHAPTER I 

The Name Encyclopedia 

PAOB 

§ 1. Significance of the Name 1 

§ 2. Use in the Greek Classics 2 

§ 3. Transition among the Fathers . . . . 

§ 4. Usage in the Period of the Reformation • 

§ 5. Usage of the Word after the Seventeenth Century 

§ 6. Usage of the Word in onr Century 

§ 7. Conclusion 



4 
6 
9 

11 
12 



CHAPTER II 

The Idea of Encyclopedia 

§ 8. The First Appearance of this Idea 15 

§ 9. Development of the Organic Idea 17 

§ 10. Victory of the Organic Idea 19 

§ 11. The Break in the Process 20 

§ 12. Provisional Result 22 

CHAPTER III 

The Conception of Encyclopedia 

§ 13. Forming of the Conception 24 

§ 14. Critical Demand 26 

§ 15. Encyclopedic Necessity 27 

§ 16. Scientific Character 28 

§ 17. Limitation of the Conception 31 

§ 18. Subdivision of Philosophy 32 

§ 19. Methodology and Hodegetics 33 

xxi 



xxii 



CONTENTS 



§20 
§21 
§22 
§23 
§24 
§ 25 
§26 



" Wissenschaftslehre " 

Organic Character . 

Still Incomplete 

A Threefold Task . 

Method of Encyclopedia 

Purely Formal 

Result 



PAGE 

36 
37 
39 
41 
42 
42 
43 



CHAPTER IV 

The Conception of Theological Encyclopedia 

§ 27. Two Difficulties . .45 

§ 28. The First Difficulty 46 

§ 29. The Second Difficulty 47 

§ 30. No Onesidedness . . . 49 

§ 31. View-point here taken 50 

§ 32. Compass of its Task .52 

§ 33. Its Relation to Methodology 53 

§ 34. Its Aim 54 

§ 35. Result 54 



SECOND DIVISION 

THE ORGANISM OP SCIENCE 
§ 36. Introduction 56 

CHAPTER I 

The Conception of Science 

§ 37. Etymology and Accepted Use of the Word . . . .59 

§ 38. Subject and Object 63 

§ 39. Organic Relation between Subject and Object ... 67 

§ 40. Language 84 

§ 41. Fallacious Theories 89 

§ 42. The Spiritual Sciences 92 



CHAPTER II 
Science impaired by Sin 



§ 43. Science and the Fact of Sin 



§ 44. Truth 



106 
114 



CONTENTS xxiii 

PAGE 

§ 45. Wisdom 119 

§ 46. Faith 125 

§ 47. Religion 146 

CHAPTER in 

The Twofold Development of Sciexce 

§ 48. Two Kinds of People 150 

§ 49. Two Kinds of Science 155 

§ 50. The Process of Science 176 

§ 51. Both Sciences Universal 181 

CHAPTER lY 

Division of Science 

§ 52. Organic Division of Scientific Study 183 

§ 53. The Five Faculties 192 

CHAPTER V 
Theology in the Organism of Science 

§54. Is there a Place for Theology in the Organism of Science ? . 211 
§ 55. The Influence of Palingenesis upon our View of Theology 

and its Relation to the Other Sciences .... 219 



THIRD DIVISION 
THEOLOGY 

CHAPTER I 

The Conception of Theology 

§ 56. The Xame 228 

§ 57. The Theological Modality of the Conception of Theology . 235 

§ 58. The Idea of Theology 241 

§ 59. The Dependent Character of Theology 248 

§ 60. Ectypal Theology the Fruit of Revelation .... 257 

§ 61. The Conception of Theology as a Science .... 292 



XXIV 



CONTENTS 



§ 62. Degenerations of Theology as " Knowledge of God " 

§ 63. Falsifications of the Conception of Theology 

§ 64. Deformations of Theology 

§ 65. The Relation of Theology to its Object . 

§ 66. Sancta Theologia (Sacred Theology) 



PAGE 

300 
306 
319 
327 
333 



CHAPTER II 

The Fundamental, Regulative, and Distinctive Principle 
OF Theology, or Principium Theologiae 

§ 67. What is here to be understood by Principium . . . 341 
§ 68. Different Representations of the Workings of this Prin- 
cipium 348 

§ 69. The Relation between this Principium and our Consciousness 355 
§ 70. Relation between this Principium and the N'atural Prin- 
cipium 368 

§ 71. Is the Natural Principium able to summon the Special Prin- 
cipium before its Tribunal ? 380 

§ 72. Universality of this Principium 389 

§ 73. This Principium and the Holy Scripture .... 397 

§ 74. The Special Principium and the Written Word . . . 405 

§ 75. Inspiration : its Relation to the Principium Essendi . . 413 

§ 76. Inspiration in Connection with Miracles .... 420 

§ 77. Inspiration according to the Self -testimony of the Scripture 428 

§ 78. The Testimony of the Apostles 441 

§ 79. Significance of this Result for the Old Testament . . 453 

§ 80. Inspiration of the New Testament 460 

§ 81. Unity and Multiplicity 473 

§ 82. The Instruments of Inspiration 481 

§ 83. The Factors of Inspiration 504 

§ 84. The Forms of Inspiration 520 

§85. Graphical Inspiration 544 

§ 86. Testimonium Spiritus Sancti, or the Witness of the Holy Spirit 553 



CHAPTER III 
The Method of Theology 

§ 87. What is demanded by the Nature of this Principium 

§ 88. The Principium of Theology in Action 

§ 89. Relation to the Spiritual Reality . 

§ 90. Spiritus Sanctus Doctor . 

§ 91. The Church and the Office . 

§ 92. The Liberty of Scientific Theology 



564 
571 

578 
583 
587 
593 



CONTENTS XXV 

CHAPTER IV 
The Organism of Theology 

PAGE 

§ 93. Part of an Organism 600 

§ 94. In the Organism of Science Theology is an Independent 

Organ 603 

605 
615 
617 
624 
627 



§ 95. The Boundary of Theology in the Organism of Science 

§ 96. Self-determination of the Organism of Theology 

§ 97. Organic Articulation of Propaedeutics .... 

§ 98. Organic Articulation to the Spiritual Reality 

§ 99. The Organism of Theology in its Parts 

CHAPTER V 

The History of Theology 

§ 100. Introduction 637 

§ 101. The Period of Naivety 639 

§ 102. The Internal Conflict 646 

§ 103. Triumph claimed Prematurely 652 

§ 104. The Development of Multiformity 658 

§ 105. The Apparent Defeat 668 

§ 106. The Period of Resurrection 672 

INDEX 681 



DIVISION I 

THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 



-<Xi'i^^ 



CHAPTER I 

THE NAME ENCYCLOPEDIA 

§ 1. Significance of the Name 

Since the encyclopedic, scientific and theological view- 
point of this Theological Encyclopedia differs in more than 
one respect from the ideas that are most widely accepted in 
our times, even among " believing " theologians, clearness 
demands that we indicate this difference and give an account 
of it. The conception of '-'- Theological Encyclopedia^'' itself 
should therefore be investigated first, and this investigation 
should be preceded by the definition of the general concep- 
tion of Encyclopedia. 

This definition starts out with the etymological explana- 
tion of the word which is used as the name of this depart- 
ment of science. Not as evidence from etymology ; this is 
excluded by our plan : but because the indication of the 
first activity in the human mind which has given rise to the 
origin of any department is frequently found in the his- 
torical choice of the name. This is not always so. To 
our Western consciousness Algebra is a meaningless term, 
however capable it may be of an etymological explanation 
in its original. Metaphysics originated by mere accident. 
Anemology is an artificially fabricated term. But as a rule 
there is a history in a name, which it will not do to pass 
by. And this is the case in a special sense with the name 

1 



2 § 2. USE IN THE GREEK CLASSICS [Div. I 

Encyclopedia. To exclude arbitrariness, and to keep our- 
selves from ideal subjectivity, the conservative path must 
again be discovered, at least to this extent — that no defi- 
nition of any conception should be admitted, which does 
not take account of what went on in the human spirit (even 
though with no very clear consciousness) when the germ 
of this conception first originated. (See Dr. Georg Runze, 
Die Bedeutung der Sprache fur das wissenschaftliche Er- 
kennen, Halle, 1886.) 

§ 2. Use in the G-reek Classics 

As for most scientific conceptions, the germ of the con- 
ception of " Encyclopedia " also is found among the Greeks. 
They were the people who, in contrast with the intuitive 
powers of the Eastern nations on the one hand, and in dis- 
tinction from the limited form of the life of the spirit in 
Rome on the other hand, were divinely endowed with the 
disposition, tendency and talent of extricating its thinking 
consciousness from the world of phenomena and of soaring 
above it on free wings. And yet, as far as we know, the 
word Encyclopedia in its combination was unknown to them. 
The first trace of this combination is discovered in Galen, 
the physician and philosopher, who died about two hundred 
years after the birth of Christ.^ The Greeks left the two 
parts of the word standing side by side, and spoke of 'E7/CU- 
/cXi09 TraiSeia. 

The sense of irai^eia in this combination needs no further 
explanation. Yiaiheia means instruction, training, educa- 
tion ; that by which a Trat? becomes an avrjp. The difficulty 
lies in the definition which makes this TraiBeia, iyKv/€\Lo<;, 
In its simplest sense, iy/cvK\Lo<; is all that which presents 
itself to you as being included in a kvkXo^^ i.e. a ring or 
circle. But this idea admits of all sorts of shades, accord- 

1 In his Hepl diaiTris o^icav^ i.e. de victus ratione in morbis acutis, c. II. 
I have named Galen as the first Greek writer. It is also found already in 
Pliny, Natur. hist. § 14 : iam omnia attingunt, quae Graeci rrjs iyKVKXoiraideias 
vocant, et tamen ignota aut incerta ingeniis facta, alia vero ita multis prodita 
ut in f astidium sint adducta. 



Chap. I] § 2. USE IN THE GREEK CLASSICS 3 

ing as it indicates something that forms a circle by itself ; 
something that lies in a sphere or circle, or within a certain 
circumference, and is thus included in it ; or something that 
moves within such a circle. A round temple was called lepov 
iyKVKXiov, because such a temple forms a circle. The hUaia^ 
or common civil rights, were called i^KVKXia^ because they 
reside in the circle of citizens, and confine themselves 
to its limits. In Athens, the Xecrovpyiai were called iy- 
Kv/cXiac, and they spoke of iyKVKXta avaXco/jiaTa, iy/cvfcXtac 
hairdvai^ iy/cvKXia ^iaKovrjixara^ etc., to indicate services in the 
interest of the state which are rendered in turn, expenses that 
returned periodically^ or activities that constantly changed 
after a fixed programme of rotation. Aristotle (^Polit. II., 
p. 1269^ 35) calls even the daily, and therefore periodically, 
returning task, ra iyKv/cXca. Thus unconsciously the idea 
of that which was of a daily occurrence, and in a certain 
sense ordinary and normal, was included under iyKVKXio^ ; ^ 
and it was in this process of thought that iy/crnXLo^ was 
added to iraiheia by which to indicate that kind and that 
measure of instruction or knowledge which was deemed 
indispensable for a normally developed Athenian citizen ; 
in part, therefore, in the same sense in which Demosthenes 
calls the legal rights that are common to all citizens, kyicvicXia 
hUaia (XXV. 74) ,2 or, in a better sense still, Aristotle 
wrote his eyKVKXia ^iXo(TO(^r)iMaTa, i.e. popular philosophy. 
It is a mistake, therefore, to interpret iyKv/cXco^ iraiheia as 
a group of sciences which in the abstract formed a circle 
or a whole, and it is equally ill-advised to understand by 
it nothing more than " everyday matters of knowledge." 
The idea of a circle or rotation must certainly be main- 
tained ; only the definition of what falls within this circle 
must not be derived from the mutual connection of these 
departments of knowledge as such, but from their connec- 
tion in relation to the forming of the young Greek. 

The explanation of Quintilian (I. 10) : orhis doctrinae, 

1 Isocrates describes it even as rd Kard. rrjv ijfx^pav eKaar-qv yLyvdfieva (III. 22). 
^ (p yap ov8k tGjv Icrwv ov5^ tGjv eyKVKkiuv diKaioiv /xerovcriav 8i,86a<nv oi pd/ioc, 
ovTos tCju dvriKi<XT(jjp irepovs atrios yiyvsraL ovk opduis k.t.X. 



4 § 3. TRANSITION AMONG THE FATHERS [Div. I 

quern Qraeci iy/cvKXcov iraiheiav vocant, is based en a mis- 
understanding, as is also that of Vitruvius I. 6, praef., and 
I. 2, encyclios disciplina uti corpus unum ex his memhris com- 
positum est : in so far as both evidently argued from the 
general significance of the word iy/cvKXio^, instead of asking 
themselves the question how it was actually used by the 
Greeks in connection with iraiheCa. This use referred 
chiefly to what was normal^ as Hesychius also interprets it 
by saying, ra iyKVKXovfieva Ta> /Siqy kol crvvrjOri ; and Strabo, 
who writes that we should not call "him who is wholly 
uneducated a statesman, but him who partakes of the all- 
round and customary training of freemen." We should 
say : the normal measure of knowledge which a civilized 
citizen has at command. But Quintilian and Vitruvius 
were correct in so far as they showed themselves im- 
pressed with the fact that there was a reason why the 
Athenians did not speak of avvridr)^ TraiheCa^ but purposely 
spoke of iyKVKXco^ TratSeta. The Greek language w^as not 
a crystallized one, like the Latin. A Greek understood and 
saw through the word iyKv/cXio^, and, when he used it in the 
sense of normal, he did not abandon the original significance 
of /cvfcXof;. With reference to his conception of it, the use 
of this word in connection with iraiheia plainly shows : 
(1) that from the knowledge of his times taken as a 
whole he separated certain parts ; (2) that he did not 
choose these parts arbitrarily, but that he arranged them 
after a given standard ; and (3) that he derived this stand- 
ard from a circle of life, and that, in connection with this 
circle of life, he grouped his separated parts of human knowl- 
edge so as to form one whole. And this threefold action of 
his mind assumed, at the same time, that he had more or less 
objectified for himself the whole of human knowledge. 

§ 3. Transition among the Fathers 

In every distinction lurks an antithesis. The iyKv/cXto^ 
TraiBeia, which was also called iy/cvKXca /jLaOt^fiara, TraiSev- 
fiaTa, or more simpl}^ still ra iyKv/cXta, did not stand in 
antithesis to what was heiieath it, — he who had no iyKv- 



Chap. I] § 3. TRANSITION AMONG THE FATHERS 5 

/cXto? TraiSeLa was simply called airaChevTo<^, — • but to the 
higher development of the philosopher and the knowledge 
necessary for a given profession or calling. This excelled 
the common kvkXo^ of the life of the citizen. Thus iyKv/cXi-o^ 
iraiheia was the lower and ordinary in antithesis to what was 
reached by higher knowledge. 

When the higher knowledge of the Christian Religion came 
out of Israel into the Roman-Grecian world, it was but natu- 
ral that Christian scholars should class the entire heathen- 
classical development with what was lower and common^ in 
antithesis to the higher jvcjo-l^ of the Holy Scriptures. This 
readily explains the fact that, as we are told by Suicer (see 
his Thesaurus in voce), in the Greek of ecclesiastical liter- 
ature iyKVKXio'; iraiheia gradually obtains a modified signifi- 
cance and comes to mean the knowledge or science which 
covered the entire circle of the heathen-classical life ; over 
against which stood OeoXoyia^ BewpCa^ or yvoyat^ as higher 
knowledge. Suicer infers this from what Eusebius writes 
in his Church History^ VI. 18, concerning Origen ; viz. 
that he trained the youth in ra rrj? e^caOev <f)i\ocro(^Ca^ and 
instructed them in the iy/cvfcXia^ showing them the subse- 
quent benefit they should derive from this later on for 
sacred studies. In the same sense Hesychius would explain 
iyfcvfcXia as being ra e^co ypd/jL/jLara^ which means that the 
iyfcvfc\io<; iraiheCa formed a circle to the heathen Greek, in 
which he himself was included and of which he formed the 
centre ; while to the Christian Greek ra eaa) were the mys- 
teries of the Christian religion, and the iyKmXtof; Traihela 
came to him e^coOev, i.e. from without his circle of life. 
Thus, if a closer investigation confirms us in this view, 
this transition was gradual and led to iy/cvKXto^ TraiheLa^ 
no longer signifying the common instruction given to the 
ordinary citizen, but the whole realm of worldly science in 
distinction from Sancta Theologia. As Zonaras states it : 
"Simply every art and science." 



6 § 4. USAGE m THE [Div. I 

§ 4. Usage in the Period of the Reformation 

With the decline of Greek culture the use of e^/cu^Xto? 
waiSeia in its pregnant sense fell away. In the scholastic 
and ecclesiastical use of the word, which formed itself under 
Western influence, the original conception of the iy/cvKXic; 
TraiheCa was expressed by Trivium et Quadrivium ; and the 
later conception of ra e^co jpdfjL/jLara either by litterae pro- 
fanae or artes liherales. We read nothing of Encyclopedia 
in the Middle Ages. In ordinary conversation, even in that 
of the " clergy," the word was lost, and only after the rise of 
Humanism in the sixteenth century does it appear again ; 
and then according to the interpretation of Quintilian, as the 
circle of sciences. Thus Elyot writes, in 1536 : " Whiche of 
some is called the worlde of science^ of others the circle of 
doctrine^ whiche is in one word of Greke : Encyclopcedia,^'* 
(The Grouvernor^ quoted in the Encyclopedia Britannica^ un- 
der the word Encycl.^ Evidently the use of the word by 
the Greeks is here not inquired into ; the sense of the word 
is indicated by the sound ; and in the wake of Quintilian, 
Elyot also does not understand the kvkKo^ to be the circle 
of citizens, but the circle of sciences, — the orhis doctrinae. 

This cleared the way for a new transition of meaning. 
In the latter part of the sixteenth and beginning of the 
seventeenth century the name Encyclopedia passed from 
the world of science to the book in which this "world of 
science " was contained. The naive assumption that the 
knowledge of the several sciences was already as good as 
complete easily accounts for the several efforts that were 
made during the Middle Ages to embody in one single 
volume the collective knowledge with which they were sat- 
isfied and for which they were grateful. This sort of book 
was given the name of Speculum, Compendium, Syntagma, or 
Sy sterna; and the effort to give manuals of this sort a 
methodical arrangement met with increasing success. And 
when attention was again called to the word Encyclopedia, 
and this was taken as the Orbis doctrinae, it was but natural 
that Encyclopedia should be considered a very proper name 



Chap. I] PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION 7 

for such a vade-mecum. Ringelberg seems to have been the 
first to choose it as such for the title of his Lucuhrationes vel 
potius ahsolutissima /cvKXoTraiSeia, published at Basle in 1541. 
After him the Hungarian, Paul Scalichius cle Lika (Paulus 
de Scala), used it for the title of his work : Epistemon JEncy- 
clopediae s. 07'bis disciplinarum turn sacrarum tum profanarum 
Bas. 1559. And when it was once adopted, Encyclopedia 
seemed to meet with so much favor for manuals of this sort 
that when, in 1584, the Margarita philosopJiica by Reisch, 
which had been published in Freiburg in 1503, went through 
a second edition, the editor inserted also the name of Ency- 
clopedia on the title-page of this work. Matthias Martinius, 
the well-known Reformed theologian of Bremen (|1630), imi- 
tated at once the example of the publishers of Basle in his 
Idea methodicae et hrevis Encyclop>ediae sive adumhratio uni- 
versalis (1606). And when also the Reformed theologian, 
Joannes Henricus Alstedt, chose the same name for his Oursus 
philosophicus, especially for his renowned quarto of over 2000 
pages, the modified use of the word Encyclopedia became 
established. In a smaller form this work was published as 
early as 1608, but was republished on a much larger scale in 
1620, at Herborn, and received the title, Cursus philosopTii- 
cae Encyclopediae ; the third volume of which also appeared 
separately under the title, Septem artes liberales. This work 
of Alstedt was for many years the standard work for the 
study of general science, which is the more evident from 
the fact that in 1649 it was reprinted, at Leyden, in four 
octavo volumes. The edition of 1620 was dedicated to the 
States-General of the United ISTetherlands. 

A short sketch of Alstedt' s work is here given, so that 
it may be clearly seen what was understood by Encyclo- 
pedia in this third significance. First we have a Compen- 
dium Encyclopediae philosophicae, or a catechetical resume 
of the whole work. Then follows the first volume of 
the real work, which is a treatise on the four Praecognita 
philosophica, to wit : (1) Archeology^ or the doctrine of prin- 
ciples ; (2) Hexiology., or the doctrine of intellectual charac- 
teristics ; (3) Technology^ or the doctrine of the sciences ; and 



8 § 4. USAGE IN THE [Div. I 

(4) Didactics^ or the doctrine of methods. These constitute 
the prolegomena, and then come in turn the sciences them- 
selves, divided into theoretical^ practical and poetical. The 
theoretical are twelve in number, to wit : Metaphysica^ Pneit- 
matica^ Physica^ Arithmetical Creometria^ Cosmographia, Ura- 
fioscopia, Geographia, Optica, Musica and Architectonica. The 
practical sciences are these five : Ethica, Oeconomica (the 
doctrine of the family), Politica, Scolastica (pedagogy) 
and Historica. And finally the disciplinae poeticae, or the 
Arts, are seven in number : (1) Lexica, (2) Grammatica, 
(3) Rhetorica, (4) Logica, (5) Oratorica, (6) Poetiea, 
(7) Mnemonica. 

From this sketch it is evident that under the name of 
Encyclopedia Alstedt virtually embraced all the sciences, 
and was bent on establishing them mutually in technical re- 
lations. What he offers is no medley or hodge-podge, but 
a well-ordered whole. And yet this systematizing of the 
several disciplinae is merely accidental with him. His real 
purpose is to collect the peculiar contents of these sciences in 
a short resume, and that to such an extent that in the divi- 
sion Lexica he places before you successively a Hebrew, Greek 
and Latin dictionary ; that under the rubric Historica he 
furnishes a fairly extensive universal history ; and that under 
the title of Mathematica, Musica, etc., he presents you on 
each occasion with a brief manual of these sciences. But 
being a man of systematic thought, he presents these col- 
lected contents not merely in a well-ordered succession, 
but even with an introduction that throws light upon 
the character of the department and upon its relation to 
the other departments. When, for instance, he passes on 
from Ethica to Oeconomica, Politica and Scolastica, he directs 
your attention to the fact that the three last named together 
form the Symhiotica, i.e. the disciplinae of social life, and 
how they flow from the principles of EtMca. And since 
from the comprehensiveness of the book the impression of the 
relation of the several parts is of necessity somewhat lost, he 
introduced the work itself with his Compendium Encyclopediae, 
in which he treats exclusively the mutual relations of the 



Chap. I] PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION 9 

whole and the parts. For which reason Alstedt's Encyclo- 
pedia stands for his times really very high. It is evidently 
his purpose to exhibit before our eyes the body of the sciences 
( Corpus Seientiarum) as one whole ; and he seeks to reach 
this end on the one hand by giving us a description of the 
members of the body, but also on the other hand by direct- 
ing our attention to the skeleton and the network of nerves 
and veins that unite these parts. 

But even with Alstedt the word Encyclopedia as such has not 
received a pregnant significance. In his introduction he him- 
self tells us that his Encyclopedia has the same end in view 
as was held by Petrus Ramus in his Professio regia^ by Gre- 
gorius Tholosanus in his Syntaxis artis mirabilis, and by 
Wower in his Polymathia. To him, therefore. Encyclopedia 
is but a convenient name for what had been furnished by 
others before him. With Alstedt Encyclopedia refers rather 
to the exhaustive scope than to the organic coherence of his 
work ; what Martinius called adumhratio universitatis. This, 
however, did not prevent him from unconsciously attaching 
a double significance to the name : (1) that of a book which 
comprehended in brief the results of the most widely known 
sciences, and (2) that of a study of the mutual relations of 
the sciences. Alstedt had a systematic nature, and his 
organic interpretation of science is already evident from his 
announcement that it is his purpose to furnish a " description 
in one exhibit of the whole estate of the kingdom of phi- 
losophy." To work methodically was to him an outspoken 
necessity. Thus in his introduction he writes : " That the 
foundation of all philosophy may be presented in one view 
to systematic minds eager for learning." 

§ 5. Use of the Word after the Seventeenth Century 

In the second half of the seventeenth and in the course of 
the eighteenth century, the systematic conception in the use 
of the word Encyclopedia retires still more into the back- 
ground than with Alstedt. It is still used as the title for 
more or less systematic reviews of the contents of separate 
sciences, and medical and juridical compendiums are published 



10 § 5. USE OF THE WORD AETER 17TH CENTURY [Div. I 

under the name of Encyclopediae, but in general Encyclopedia 
acquires more and more the stamp of a Poly history. Finally 
the idea of a systematic collocation of the sciences is entirely 
abandoned, and, in order to condense the ever-increasing quan- 
tity of material in a convenient form, refuge is taken in the lexi- 
cographical form. Somewhat in the spirit of Suidas the alpha- 
bet takes the place of the organic system, and the so-called 
Alphabetical Real-Encyclopedia holds its triumphant entry. 

First came Jablonski with his Allgemeines Lexicon der 
Kiinste und WissencJiaften, Lpz. 1721, and Zedler with 
his G-rosses vollstdndiges Universallexicon aller Wissenchaften 
und Kiinste, 1732-1750, in 68 volumes ; followed by the 
Deutsche Encyelopaedie, oder allgemeines Worterhuch aller 
Kiinste und Wissenschaften in 23 volumes ; and, finally, the 
still unfinished work of Ersch and Grrilher begun in 1818. 
The name of Encyclopedia came especially into use for this 
kind of Real-Lexicon through the Kncyclopedie of Diderot 
and d'Alembert and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or a uni- 
versal dictionary of arts and sciences. Till, finally, Pierer, 
Meyer, and Brockhaus undertook to let this Real-Lexicon 
run a continuous course, and for a small price to furnish a 
Conversationslexicon or Real-Kneyclopaedie, which keeps the 
people informed of the progress of scientific investigations. 
These general Real-Lexica have found favor also in the 
domain of the separate sciences, so that now there are such 
alphabetical Encyclopedias for almost all departments and 
sciences, partly for the learned and partly for the general 
public. And in this sense, the present meaning of the word 
Encyclopedia is: A work which embraces briefly, and in alpha- 
betical order, the most important particulars thus far known 
of each of the subjects that belong either to a single depart- 
ment of science or to the domain of science at large. The 
distinction between the non-theological and theological 
sciences is here utterly lost from view. Already, in 1559, 
this antithesis had been abandoned by Paulus de Scala. 
Martinius and Alstedt had still respected it. But when 
the Polyhistory excluded all system from Encyclopedia, of 
itself this antithesis also fell away. 



Chap. I] §6. USAGE OF THE WORD IN OUR CENTURY 11 

§ 6. Usage of the Word in our Century 

The understanding of Encyclopedia, as a brief resume of 
the results of a science, was still held in our century in so 
radical a sense, that in the Introduction to his Encyclopaedie 
und Methodologie der PMlologischen Wissenschaft, Lpz. 1877, 
p. 36, Boeckh writes that the conception of Encyclopedia lies 
in its being " a general presentation," and then adds : "A 
logical scheme is not necessarily involved in it, seeing that 
it might be constructed simply as an Alphabetical Encyclo- 
pedia. I do not mean to sa}'- that an Encyclopedia should 
be devoid of all logical character, but only, as an Encyclo- 
pedia it is not necessary.''^ All idea of system is thus ex- 
cluded from the conception attached by him to the name. 
To him it is no orhis doctrinae, as it was to Elyot, nor 
a " description of the estate of the kingdom of sciences " 
{delineatio latifundii regni scientiarum) as it was to Alstedt. 
To him no system follows from the idea of Encyclopedia. 
From its very nature it needs but to be an agglomerate ; 
and if it has any connection, that flows from its general 
character, and not from its nature as Encyclopedia. 

The use of the word Encyclopedia came, however, to 
stand in direct opposition to this under the influence of 
modern philosophy, after Hegel chose the name of Ency- 
clopedia as title for his systematic review of philosophy 
(^Encyclopaedia der Phil. Wissenschaft, Heidelb. 1817, 1827, 
1830, Berlin, 1840 and 1843. Sdmmtl Werke, Bd. 6, la and 
W). Before Hegel, Klugel, G. F. Reuss, J. G. Buhle, K. 
Ruef, W. J. G. Krug, E. Schmid and others had used the 
name of Encyclopedia for their expositions of the relations of 
the sciences or of the departments of any one science. Mur- 
sinna and Clarisse did the same in theology, J. S. Piitter in 
law and Boerhaave in medicine. But the idea of system in 
the conception of Encyclopedia came to the foreground with 
full consciousness only when Fichte took science itself to be 
an object of science, and when Hegel, in the same track, 
wedded the name of Encyclopedia to this idea. Science, as 
such, now became an object of scientific investigation ; the 



12 § 7. CONCLUSION [Div. I 

idea of system became the chief aim in Encyclopedia; and from 
the material of each science so much only was taken as was 
necessary for the proper understanding of its organic life. 

This idea, which answered so fully the need of our time, 
extended itself, though slowly, from science in general to 
the individual sciences. Special Encyclopedias also ceased 
to be compendia, and more and more took the form of sci- 
entific investigation into the nature of these special sciences. 
There were differences in the proportionate treatment of 
what was formal and material in a science. In several 
Encyclopedias the resume of the general data of a science 
was still very extensive, while from other Encyclopedias 
it almost entirely disappeared. But, even with this by no 
means insignificant difference, the idea of system came more 
and more to be viewed by almost every one as the distin- 
guishing mark of the Encyclopedical treatment. Thus, 
while with Alstedt Encyclopedia is still the name of a hook^ 
it has come to be more and more the name of a separate 
science. 

§ 7. Conclusion 

This brief review of the use of the word Encyclopedia 
leads to the following result. The use of this word has 
passed through five stages. (1) Originally the Greek 
attached the significance to it of a certain group of subjects 
of knowledge whose scope Avas determined by the circle of 
the life of the Athenian citizen. (2) The rise of Christian 
Theology extended this significance to the entire heathen- 
classical science in distinction from Theology. (3) Reviving 
Humanism used it in the sense of Compendium^ and, with a 
weak effort to furnish a systematic exposition, it embraced 
under it the entire Humanistical knowledge. (4) During 
the most flourishing period of Polyhistory, Encyclopedia 
became the name for an alphabetical agglomerate of what 
was noteworthy in every subject in general, with the exclu- 
sion of almost all conception of system. And, finally (5), 
through the rise of the newer philosophy the word Encyclo- 
pedia became the name of an independent science, which has 
for its object of investigation all other science. 



Chap. I] § 7. CONCLUSION 13 

Thus the word Encyclopedia serves successively to indi- 
cate a part of human knowledge ; then profane science ; then, 
it is used as the name of a book, taken partly as compendium 
and partly as an alphabetical agglomerate ; and, finally, as the 
name of an independent science. 

But however different these five interpretations may seem, 
the fundamental significance, that led to the formation of the 
word Encyclopedia, is not lost. By his e^KVKXio^ iraiheia 
the Greek divided the whole of human knowledge ; i.e. he 
objectified it, analyzed it, and brought a certain order into it, 
while by his iyKVK\co(! he bound the separated part to a given 
circle. The Christian writers did this same thing; only 
with this difference, that the part separated by them was 
larger, that it was bound to a more extended circle, and that 
this circle was determined by another principle as its centre. 
The Humanists put the content of this part of human knowl- 
edge in the place of the abstract conception of it, and tried 
to fix the boundary of the circle, in which this part of 
knowledge moved, not by the persons with whom it be- 
longed, - but by the organic coherence of this knowledge 
itself. Polyhistory and Real-Encyclopedia in the alpha- 
betical form gave, like the Compendia of the Humanists, 
the content of the knowledge itself, but under the two 
restrictions, that that only would be taken up which was 
of importance either to the circle of the learned or of the 
public at large, and that the circle in which one moved 
was not bound to the science itself, but, as with the Greek, 
to the " learned " or educated public. And finally the latest 
interpretation, which gives the name of Encyclopedia to an 
individual science that takes all the other sciences for the 
object of its investigation, turns from the content of the 
Humanists and of Polyhistory to the well-ordered concep- 
tion of the Greeks, i.e. to a norma for the grouping; only 
with this difference, that it interprets this ordering, for- 
mulating and grouping organically, and so on the one hand 
extends them to the whole realm of science, and on the other 
liand causes them to be governed by the principle of science 
itself. 



14 § 7. CONCLUSION [Dit. I 

The reason which has led to the repeated resumption of 
the word Encyclopedia^ and which finally implanted this 
organic sense in it, lies in the conception of the kvkXo^. 
That the Greek took this word to define the TraiSeta^ shows 
that there was present in his mind the idea of what belonged 
together within the realm of human knowledge and grouped 
itself about one common centre. The Polyhistor and the 
alphabetical Real-Encyclopedist weakened this conception. 
The writers of the old Compendia, and they who at present 
seek in Encyclopedia chiefly the idea of organic relation, 
cause this original motive of the Greeks to assert itself 
again, and also enlarge upon it. Quintilian already con- 
ceived something of the rich development of which this 
motive of the kvkXo^ was susceptible when he interpreted 
Encyclopedia by ^'orbis doctrinae." 

This motive will ever maintain the supremacy in the 
meaning of the word, even though the sense has lost for 
us something of the riches attached to the kvk\o<; by the 
Greek, especially in relation to the (T<^alpa (see Plato, 
de Legibus, X., p. 898 a). If it is not possible for science 
to be anything but a unit, if it has an inner impulse which 
determines its course, and if in this course it is fastened 
or bound to a fixed point, as a circle to its centre, there 
can be no reason to question the propriety of the devel- 
opment of the meaning of this word " Encyclopedia," by 
which it has come to mean the investigation of the organ- 
ism of science. To avoid confusion of speech, therefore, 
it would be well, if from now on the alphabetical collection 
of separate articles would call itself nothing but Lexicon, — 
either Meal-Lexicon in a general, or Lexicon for Arts and 
Sciences in a special, sense, — so that Encyclopedia might 
be exclusively used as the name of that science which has 
science itself as its object of investigation. 



CHAPTER II 

THE IDEA OF Eis^CYCLOPEDIA 

§ 8. The First Appearance of this Idea 

The historic career of the idea of Encyclopedia is different 
from that of the name. Much of what falls under this idea 
bore a different name, while on the other hand the name 
Encyclopedia has repeatedly been used for what was entirely 
foreign to the idea of it. The idea of Encyclopedia lies in 
the conception that the several parts of human knowledge 
are related to each other, and that it is possible and neces- 
sary for our mind to penetrate into this relation and to expli- 
cate it. When a group of phenomena reflects itself in a 
mirror, man is compelled to investigate not merely those 
phenomena^ but also the reflected image, by means of Optics. 
And what Optics effects for the image presented to sight, 
Encyclopedia designs to do for the reflection of what exists 
in our science. There lies a majesty in the human mind by 
virtue of which it cannot rest until it has acquired full domin- 
ion in the world of thought. It cannot bear the suggestion 
that there should still be something in that world of thought 
that has withdrawn itself from the power of its sceptre. 
This impels it to scan not merely the whole horizon of 
phenomena with its knowledge, but the field of knowledge 
itself with its thought. An atomistical science offends the 
unity-sense of its own mind, or, by the pulverizing of the 
cosmos, robs that mind of confidence of step in its walk. 
And therefore it is bound to presume a relation between 
the parts of its knowledge also, nor can it rest until it has 
seen through that relation organically^ because in this way 
only can science harmonize with the organic unity of its own 
thinking^ as well as with the organic unity of the Kosmos. 

15 



16 §8. THE riRST APPEARANCE OF THIS IDEA [Div. I 

But the human mind does not subject this field of knowl- 
edge to its greatness all at once. At best it is a process of 
slow growth. A space of twenty-three centuries separates 
Plato from Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and Hegel's Encyclo- 
paedie^ and Real-Encyclopedia still stands only at the very 
beginning of its clearer development. If Diogenes Laertius 
(IV. I, 5) can be believed, Plato already ventured upon a 
somewhat systematic classification of the several parts of our 
knowledge in a lost work, At,d\o<yoi rcav irepl ttjv 7rpay/jiaT€Lav 
ofxoiwv. The same is said of Speusippus, Plato's kinsman, in 
his ''Opoi, and of Aristotle in his liepl iTrtcrTrjjJicov ; but since 
these writings have not been preserved, it is not possible to 
judge of the tendency of these studies. So much, however, 
is certain, that in those circles serious thinking was already 
begun upon the iraiheCa in general and the einaTrifxai as such, 
but it took at once a more practical course. Aristotle indeed 
defined the boundary and the task of the several sciences. 
And Varro and Pliny actually put together the contents of 
different parts of knowledge. The organism itself of the 
plant was not reached ; flowers were picked and tied to- 
gether as bouquets, but in such a way that the relation was 
found at first almost solely in the cord that was twined 
about the stems, and a harmonious arrangement of flowers 
after their kinds is scarcely yet suggested. Varro's Rerum 
humanarum et divinarum antiquitates and his Disciplinarum 
lihri IX have both been lost, and Pliny's Historia naturalis 
is the only treatise that enables us to form any idea of the 
defectiveness of these first efforts. 

With Hugo of St. Victor (f 1141) and Vincent of Beau- 
vais (f 1264) the eye is opened to this harmony in classifica- 
tion. That which Marcianus Capella (f 406) gives us in his 
Satyricon., Cassiodorus (f562) in his Institutio divinarum 
litterarum^ Isidore of Seville (f636) in his Origines, and 
Hrabanus Maurus (f856) in his De universo lihri XXII. 
strives indeed after unity, as may be seen from Hraba- 
nus' title, but succeeds only in the presentation of a dis- 
tasteful and overdone bouquet. Hugo of St. Victor, on the 
other hand, seems to have an eye for the inner relation of 



CuAP. II] § 9. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORGANIC IDEA 17 

the sciences when in his Eruditio didascalia he gives us a 
descriptio et partitio artium, in which he endeavors to show 
quomodo imaquaeque diseiplina contineat aliam et ah alia con- 
tineatur. But even his systematic talent did not reach far. 
He divides the disciplinae into three groups: (1) the theorica 
contra ignorantiam (to wit: theology, physics and mathe- 
matics); (2) the practica contra vitium (to wit: ethics, 
oeconomics and politics); and (3) the mecTianica contra in- 
firmitatem (to wit: mechanica, to which the trivium is added). 
Vincent followed chiefly the division of Hugo, which (with 
the exception of the change of mechanica into poetica) held 
its grou.nd till the seventeenth century, but he gave it a more 
enduring phase by the division of his giant work into specu- 
lum historiale, naturale and doctrinale^ to which was added 
at a later date a speculum morale by one of his followers. 
The mutual relation of the sciences is grasped somewhat 
more firmly already by Bonaventura (f 1274) and by Thomas 
Aquinas (f 1274). Excellent suggestions are given by Louis 
de Vives (fl540) in his XX books de caus. corrupt, art. 
de trad, discipl. et de ortihus ; but this relation was grasped 
for the first time as organic by Bacon of Yerulam (fl626), 
who in his work de dignitate et augmentis scientiarum (Lond. 
1624), and more yet in his organon scientiarum (1620), divided 
the sciences organically, i.e. after a principle derived from 
those sciences themselves. The development of this idea 
could follow only when the task of collecting the contents 
of ready knowledge gave place to reflection on the relations 
of what had been collected. No doubt, only those who have 
never looked into Alstedt's Encyclopedia can dispute the 
fact that this gigantic systematician had the systematizing 
talent ; but the material to be collected began to be too ex- 
tensive for the handling of it all and the deeper study of its 
relations to lie within the reach of a single scholar. 

§ 9. Development of the Organic Idea 

Since from the days of Plato the human mind has been 
dimly conscious of the fact that the several parts of our 
knowledge form one body (o-w/ia); since it has been sought 



18 § 9. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORGANIC IDEA [Div. I 

in every way to give expression to this consciousness by the 
actual collection of the several fragments of this one knowl- 
edge in one work, or more correctly by reflecting it in one 
speculum ; and since the arrangement of this crude mass of 
itself demanded an account of the manner in which these 
members of this one body were related, — the ever-increasing 
burden of ready knowledge needed to be thrown from the 
shoulder before the human mind could be sufficiently free, 
with ever more definiteness of purpose, to choose this rela- 
tion as the object of investigation. Two phenomena hastened 
this process. On the one hand, the advent of the alphabetici, 
who, for the sake of making their books usable, purposely 
abandoned the systematic track and at an early period sought 
the Ariadne-thread for the labyrinth of their articles in the 
a b c ; and on the other hand the revival of the philosophical 
tendency that marks the second half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. When the alphabetici cast the systematic method over- 
board, it was natural for others to fish it up. And when the 
philosophical tendency everywhere went, by way of the trunk, 
down to the root, the duty lay at hand of finding a principle 
according to which the sciences themselves might be divided. 
For a long time the remembrance of the word Encyclopedia 
was altogether lost. Used to a material encyclopedia, men 
thought that the encyclopedic domain was abandoned as soon 
as they withdrew from the bazaar for the sake of the exclu- 
sive study of the invoice of the goods on hand. The real- 
lexicographers, who had abandoned the Encyclopedic idea, 
were reputed the only persons still entitled to the name of 
Encyclopedists, while the actual Encyclopedists, who gave 
themselves to the study of the organism of the sciences, did 
not dream of taking possession of their title. 

Johann August Ernesti wrote under the title of Initia doc- 
trinae solidioris (1736), and his friend J. M. Gessner treated 
his subject as Primae lineae isagoges in eruditionem univer- 
salem (1745), thus furnishing actual encyclopedia without a 
single thought about the name of Encyclopedia. In his 
Kurzer Inhegriff aller Wissenschaften (1756), which is fol- 
lowed in the main by Reimarus, Kliigel, Biisch and Buhle, 



Chap. II] §10. VICTORY OF THE ORGANIC IDEA 19 

Sulzer and his followers no doubt furnished some system, but 
with a brief resume of the content for every department of 
science. With them formal Encyclopedia obtained no inde- 
pendent position as it did with Ernesti and Gessner. Even 
Eschenburg, v/ho in his Lehrhuch der Wissenschaftskunde, 
1792, embodied Kant's idea, as well as his followers Hefter, 
Burdach and Kraus, continued to look upon the formal as 
the frame in which the material was arranged ; and it is 
only in Erhard Schmid's Crrundriss der allgemeinen Encyclo- 
faedie und Methodologie (1810), in Schaller's JEneyclopaedie 
und Methodologie der Wissenschaften (1812), and partly in 
lasche's Arcliitectonik der Wissenschaften (1816), that the 
suggestion of Ernesti and Gessner is worked out, and the 
consciousness returns that this study of science as science 
is Encyclo]pedia in its real sense. 

§ 10. Victory of the Organic Idea 

And yet these men only stood in the vestibule ; Johann 
Gottlieb Fichte was the first to unlock the temple itself 
by his treatises on Die Bestimmung des G-elehrten (1794) 
and Das Wesen des Gelehrten (1806); but especially by his 
numerous monographs on the Wissenschaftslehre, which after 
1801 he prepared for his classes in Berlin and which later he 
explained and defended. This does not mean that in these 
studies Fichte gave us a true Encyclopedia. On the con- 
trary, in his Wissenschaftslehre no trace of this can be found. 
But Fichte marked knowing itself as the object of an inde- 
pendent science; and thus quickened the dim consciousness 
that the encyclopedic insight into the organism of the sci- 
ences was not merely an auxiliary aid by which to create 
order in the chaos, nor simply tended to satisfy the sys- 
tematic inclination and longing after order that is active in 
the man of science, but that the insight into the nature and 
into the organic relation of the sciences is an aim which 
must be striven after per se as an indispensable part of our 
knowledge. " Das Wissen vom Wissen,'' as Fichte preferred 
to call it, is the root from which all fundamental Encyclo- 
pedia germinates. By this watchword the truth had come 



20 § 11. THE BREAK IN THE PROCESS [Div. 1 

to light that the " knowledge " of man forms a \yorl(i by 
itself ; that without unity of principle this world of our 
knowledge remains unintelligible; and that the necessary 
relation between (1) man who knows^ (2) hnoivledge as such, 
and (3) the known^ or the thus far acquired science^ must be 
explained organically from this one principle. Only when this 
was perceived with some measure of clearness was the science 
of Encyclopedia born. Not that this is the only science that 
is called to solve the problem in all its parts. One only of 
these three parts is its appointed task. The Wissenschafts- 
lehre has knowledge ( Wissen) itself for its object ; Logic 
takes knowing man as its object of investigation; and Ency- 
clopedia confines itself to the investigation of science as an 
independent whole. But it is only by Fichte's radical for- 
mulations in the domain of the Wissenschaftslehre that the in- 
dependent character of Encyclopedia entered into the sense 
of our times. Now, indeed, it was felt that the unit of 
science formed a well-rounded whole ; that an inwardly 
impelling power determined the circumference of its circle ; 
and that the place for each of its parts is assigned by the 
character of its organism. From technic, which it had thus 
far been. Encyclopedia was changed into a philosophical 
conception; and when animated by this thought Schelling 
published his Vbrlesungen itber die Methode des Academisehen 
Studiums^ and Tittmann and Beneke in like manner dis- 
placed the mechanical interpretation of the study by the 
organic, the process but awaited the intellectual powers of 
a Hegel to give us the first encyclopedia in the higher sense, 
if not of all, at least of philosophical, science. 

§ 11. The Break in the Process 

This very advent of Encyclopedia, as a philosophical sci- 
ence which has science itself for its object, rendered the 
execution of an Encyclopedia of general science provision- 
ally impossible, and necessitated seeking the development of 
this new-born science first in the domain of the special sci- 
ences. Here also progress was to be made from the special 
to the general. Thus the second half especially of this cen- 



Chap. II] § 11. THE BREAK IN THE PROCESS 21 

tury has witnessed the publication of a considerable number 
of special Encyclopedias, which as a rule have followed the 
division of the great field of science into a theological, 
philological, juridical, medical and physical science. Two 
factors have cooperated to further the course of this process. 
First the difficulty presented itself that he only who himself 
was well versed in a science is able to write its Encyclopedia 
with any hope of success, and that in view of the vast 
expanse of detailed knowledge and literature required for 
every special science, it becomes more and more inconceiv- 
able that one man should be able to command this sufficient 
knowledge of all the departments of science. However 
much, therefore, Encyclopedia is also an undoubted part 
of philosophical science, yet it is entirely impossible that 
one philosopher should be able to manipulate all the ma- 
terial for the science of Encyclopedia. No other course, 
therefore, was open but the one by which Theological 
Encyclopedia is developed by theologians. Historical by 
historians. Medical by physicians, etc., i.e. by each one for 
his own department; and only when each of these separate 
Encyclopedias has reached sufficient development can the 
man arise who may unite the results of these subdivisions 
into one philosophical whole. And on the other hand, the 
writing of an Encyclopedia has scarcely ever been under- 
taken without the practical aim of introducing students 
of a given faculty into their science. A certain /cvk\o<; 
is necessary for every Encyclopedia, and this was given in 
the historical division of the faculties. Because of the sub- 
division of its task, the Philosophical faculty alone has de- 
parted from this, and has divided itself into philosophical, 
philological, historical and natural philosophy groups ; and 
where the natural philosophy and literary faculties are also 
divided as faculties, as they are in the Netherlands, distinction 
has still further been made between the philological and philo- 
sophical task of the latter. This course of Encyclopedical 
study has an undeniable disadvantage. In the first place, a 
jurist, theologian, physician or philologian may readily fall 
short of philosophical unity and power of thought. Secondly, 



22 § 12. PEOVISIONAL EESULT [Div. I 

instead of the principle of science itself, the historical divi- 
sion of the faculties has become the motive of the division. 
Thirdly, the practical purpose has tempted more frequently 
to the production of a convenient manual than to the writ- 
ing of a scientific Encyclopedia. And fourthly (an evil indi- 
cated already by Fichte and Grliber), the former custom of 
introducing the students into the universitas scientiarum 
too, as well as into their own department, has been more 
and more neglected. The academy has become an agglom- 
erate of faculty-schools, and the university idea in its later 
interpretation has lost something of its inner truth. 

§ 12. Provisional Result 

This review of the development of the Encyclopedic idea, 
in connection with the history of the name of Encyclopedia, 
yields the following result. The Encyclopedic idea sprang 
from the dim consciousness that the knowledge at our ser- 
vice can be made the subject of thought, which study brings 
about the classification of its material into groups. This dim 
consciousness found at first only a practical expression, which 
is evident from the choice of the name iy/cv/cXio^, and from 
the distinction that was made between a higher and lower, 
a holy or profane, group of knowledge. Then the body, 
or cwyLta, of this knowledge was objectified in large com- 
pendia, which collected all disposable knowledge and so 
presented it as a unity. The classification in these compen- 
dia was at first entirely arbitrary or accidental, till gradu- 
ally the need made itself felt of introducing system into this 
arrangement. This systematizing became ever more difficult 
as the material to be arranged constantly grew in volume, 
till finally the two motives parted company, and the material 
was arranged on the one hand alphabetically, exclusive of 
all system, while on the other hand the arrangement and the 
relation were studied independently. This latter study was 
provisionally almost exclusively technical, till Fichte gave 
the impetus to postulate the investigation of the organic 
system of all science itself as a necessary and independent 
science. The misunderstanding presented itself here, for a 



Chap. II] § 12. PROVISIONAL RESULT 23 

while, that the name of Encyclopedia was held by those who, 
in the collection of the material, sacrificed every Encyclopedic 
idea ; while the students of true Encyclopedia allowed the 
name to be lost. But during the last decennials, Encyclo- 
pedia, as name also, has returned to its proper study, and the 
Real-Lexica as compendiums of the material and the Ency- 
clopedias as studies of the organic relation of this material, 
separate. Provisionally these Encyclopedic studies, in the 
narrower sense, are still of a more special character ; and 
only when these special studies shall have reached a resting- 
point where they can take each other by the hand, will the 
time come in which general Encyclopedia can again be suc- 
cessfully studied. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CONCEPTION OF ENCYCLOPEDIA 

§ 13. Forming of the Conception 

The word, the idea, and the conception of Encyclopedia 
are genetically related. Hence in Encyclopedia also the old 
feud can be renewed, whether the conception lies at the begin- 
ning or at the end of the development of the encyclopedic 
thought. To prevent misunderstanding, let it be stated that 
this paragraph takes "conception" in the last-mentioned 
sense. It is not difficult to account for this choice in the use 
of the word. The process of thought that takes place in the 
human spirit consists by no means merely in the linking 
together of those series of thoughts which you have willed 
to think, and by thinking have produced. This is but the 
labor which as an arboriculturist you have performed in the 
garden of your thoughts. But as the work of the gardener 
is only possible because of the fertility of the garden, and 
because tliis growth in his garden impels him to work, 
which work he himself directs, so also in the human mind 
there lives a world of thought, in which is growth and luxu- 
riance of life independently of the human will and disposi- 
tion ; and from this living world of thought one receives the 
impulse to think himself, and by this impulse mental effort 
is directed and defined. When this is lost from sight, we 
may have persons who think, but there is no development 
of thought in the human mind. The common element is 
then wanting from our thinking, by which alone the under- 
standing of each other becomes possible. In this way all 
thought becomes aphoristical dilettantism and human lan- 
guage inconceivable. If we now apply this to the "con- 
ception," it follows that the conception also is no form 

24 



Chap. Ill] § 13. FORMING OF THE CONCEPTION 25 

of thought which we ourselves cast, but that it germinates, 
grows, and ripens independently of us, and is only plucked 
by us. As the flower was already present in the seed, and 
unfolded itself from it by a lawful development, so does 
the clear conception spring slowly from a process in our 
world of thought, which primarily at least went on alto- 
gether outside our consciousness. And yet this unconscious 
working produces its effect upon our act. The infant seeks 
the mother-breast and drinks without having the least im- 
pression of what the breast is, or the mother, or the milk. 
From that unconscious substrata of our life germinates first 
of all impression. This impression is first defined by the 
ivord by which it is expressed. The idea which impels us 
springs from it but gradually. And only when this idea 
inspires us, and has impelled us to act, does the bud set 
itself and by degrees unfold; till at length as fruit of 
empirical knowledge our insight becomes possible into the 
structure of the flower, and our conception forms itself. 

Speaking, therefore, in the organic sense, this "concep- 
tion " was already present in its genn in the first impulse 
that worked in us from the unconscious world of thought ; 
this conception germinated in the impression ; it matured into 
the idea ; it directed us in our practical actions ; and finally 
objectified itself in our forming of the conception. If, on 
the other hand, you take the "conception" as you grasped 
it in its completed form, then of course it became observable 
only at the end of this process of thought, and to you it had 
its birth at that moment only in which you plucked it. 

Applying this to Encyclopedia, we find that the concep- 
tion of Encyclopedia also was not cast by us arbitrarily, but 
that it germinated of necessity and defined itself. This 
conception is no product of our imagination, but it com- 
pelled our thought to take it up into itself. As such the 
germ was already prepared, when the first impulse began to 
work in the human mind, from which sprang all Encyclopedic 
study. But if you take this conception, as here it must 
be taken, in distinction from the idea, the word, and the 
impression, then it only began to exist for you at that mo- 



26 § 14. CRITICAL DEMAND [Div. I 

ment when with a clear insight you grasped the thought 
that impelled you. Genetically, therefore, we stand before 
this process: that originally in the human mind there 
Avorked the need of bringing a certain order into the chaos of 
its knowledge, not arbitrarily, but agreeably to a distin- 
guishing principle that forced itself upon it. Further, that 
this need quickened the impression that there is a certain 
order in what presented itself to it as chaos, and that for this 
impression also it sought a representation in the figure and 
activity of the cyclos, and that in this way it formed the 
word Encyclopedia. That under the impulse of this impres- 
sion clarified by the word^ it performed Encyclopedical labor. 
That first with less and then with greater clearness the 
Encyclopedic idea led it in this work. And that only after 
this the Encyclopedical thought in turn was thought out by 
it, till at length it was able to give itself an account of what 
it accomplished and aimed at in this Encyclopedical labor. 
In this way only it grasped the Encyclopedic thought with 
entire clearness of consciousness, and thus formed its con- 
ception. 

§ 14. Critical Demand 

In forming this definition of the conception we must 
work critically. Simply to construe the conception out of 
all that presents itself as Encyclopedic work is already 
impossible, because the great variety of matter exhibited 
under this label allows of no unity of conception. Just 
because Encyclopedic students were impelled for a long 
time by the impression only, led by the word^ or inspired bj 
the idea^ but lacked the verification of the clear conception, 
it could not but happen that many things allied more or less 
distantly to Encyclopedia were ornamented with its name ; 
that a good deal belonging to it was wrongly interpreted ; 
and that a large share of inseparable essentials was neg- 
lected. The definition of the conception of Encyclopedia 
demands, therefore, a critical discrimination of matter, and 
while on the one hand the idea must be grasped from 
what presents itself under this name, on the other hand also 
the historical content must be marked out agreeably to the 



Chap. Ill] § 15. ENCYCLOPEDIC NECESSITY 27 

demand of this idea. The lack of a pure definition of the con- 
ception has created much confusion and error, and it is the 
duty of the conception-definition to restore us from these paths 
of error to the right track, and from this confusion to clear 
distinctions. For this reason our investigation began with 
the consideration of the tvord and its original significance, in 
order to grasp the root-idea of Encyclopedia as such; after 
this we traced the empirical use of this word under the 
guidance of the idea; but now from this root-idea the con- 
ception must be dialectically grasped and fixed. It is the 
root-idea that the human mind brings about a certain dis- 
tinction and order in the chaos of our human knowledge, 
which is not done arbitrarily, but agreeably to a fixed order 
assumed to be present there. Under the lead of the general 
Encyclopedic idea this seeking after order in the chaos 
took place practically in all sorts of ways. First there was 
a classifying of this human knowledge by distinguishing 
between certain groups belonging to a fixed sphere or circle 
of life. Then order was sought by collecting the treasure of 
accessible knowledge into proper arrangement. After that 
the effort to establish order was made by placing the several 
departments of knowledge in a certain logical relation. 
And, finally^ the attempt was made to penetrate to the 
organism itself, which science taken as a whole presents. 
It is not proper arbitrarily to mark one of these four mean- 
ings as the conception of Encyclopedia. Hence we must 
see along which of these lines the lawful development of the 
Encyclopedic thought comes to its conception. 

§ 15. Encyclopedic Necessity 

This investigation is governed by the antithesis of chaos 
and order. If we ourselves bring order into the chaos of 
our knowledge, after whatever manner we please, there is 
no Encyclopedic conception possible, because in that case 
every age and scholar is free to do this as he wills. But if 
we have no such liberty, then there is a something that 
binds us, and the question must be put as to what compels 
us logically to take this order in this way and not in the 



28 § 16. SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER [Div. I 

other, and with what right a succeeding generation disap- 
proves in part of the interpretation of a bygone generation 
and improves upon it. This compulsion springs in the first 
instance from the logical necessity which dominates in our 
thought. But this is not all. For then the question arises 
whether this logical necessity for our thinking has its ground 
in our thinking itself alone, or whether it proceeds from 
data outside of our thinking. Or, if you like to apply this 
to Encyclopedia, we face the question whether the necessity 
of bringing Encyclopedic order into this chaos of our knowl- 
edge in one way and not in another, is born solely from the 
fact that by our thinking itself we arrange this knowledge 
in this order and not in the other, or whether this Encyclo- 
pedic order is imposed upon that thinking by something that, 
outside of the thinker, lies in the object itself. Upon what 
ground the latter is assumed will be explained by the inves- 
tigation of the conception of science. Here we merely state 
that in our bringing about of Encyclopedic order in the 
chaotic treasure of our knowledge, we are governed in two 
respects by a compulsory order which is separable from our 
thinking. First, because the treasure of knowledge which 
we obtain by our thinking does not originate first by our 
thinking, but exists before we think; and, on the other hand, 
because the knowledge to be arranged in order stands in 
relation to a world of phenomena which is independent of 
our thought. Since now that world of our knowledge and 
that world of phenomena are not chaotic but organic^ our 
thinking cannot rest till in the treasure of our knowledge it 
has exhibited such an Encyclopedic order as will harmonize 
with the organic relation both of that world of our knowl- 
edge and of that world of phenomena. Thus our human 
spirit is not to invent a certain order for our knowledge, but 
to seek out and to indicate the order which is already there. 

§ 16. Scientific Character 

This necessity alone imparts to Encyclopedic study its 
scientific character. With every other interpretation it may 
be a play of the imagination^ it may be art^ but no science. 



Chap. Ill] § 10. SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER 29 

For a hiatus remains in our scientific consciousness as long 
as the mind of man has not investigated with its thinking 
not only the whole of the rest of the a;oV/xo?, but also the 
processes of its own thought upon this /cocr/xo?. If from this 
the necessity arises for man to begin a scientific investiga- 
tion of himself as a thinking being and of the laivs which his 
thinking oheys^ then there follows from this at the same time 
the demand that he shall make science itself an object of 
investigation and exhibit to his consciousness the organism 
of science. Man, indeed, with the first rise of the Encyclo- 
pedic impulse, dealt with the mass of general knowledge^ 
which was at his disposal as a chaos, but now science itself 
as object takes its place. Science is distinguished from 
general knowledge by the fact that science puts the emphasis 
upon the order in that knowledge. Science is systematic^ 
i.e. it is knowledge orderly arranged. The native physician 
among the negroes in Africa deals only with flesh and bone, 
while the scientific European or American physician deals 
with a hody^ and his medical science is founded upon the 
organic existence of the body. In the same way the dilettant- 
Encyclopedist asks merely after the knowledge at hand, 
while the Encyclopedist who is a man of science interprets 
that knowledge as a system^ and understands it consequently 
as science. And this decides the question as to which one 
of the four interpretations of Encyclopedic arrangement 
mentioned in § 15 is scientifically correct. 

Let a fairly complete collection of medicines be brought 
together, all of which are well known to you, and let it be 
j^our duty to arrange this chaos of medicines scientifically. 
How will you do it ? Will you sort the medicines according 
to the several patients, one of whom will require this, the 
other that? Will you sort them according to the manner in 
which they are put up, bottles with bottles, powders with 
powders ? Or will you imitate the druggist, who gives them 
places most conveniently at hand for sale? By no means. 
The first assortment, according to the patients, is proper for 
the messenger who is to bring the medicines to the houses ; 
the second assortment is convenient for transporting medi- 



30 § 16. SCIENTIFIC CHARACTER [Dir. I 

cines in large quantities ; and the third assortment is neces- 
sary in part for the convenient arrangement of bottles and 
pots on the drug-store shelves. But even though with these 
three modes of sorting, the nature, effect, and use of the 
medicines are measurably considered, these assortments are 
not scientific. For a scientific arrangement of them the 
physician must enter upon the organic relations of this 
Avorld of medicines, and from this derive a principle for 
determining the arrangement. Applying this to the treas- 
ures of accessible knowledge, we find that the Greeks sorted 
originally according to the need of the patients, i.e. of those 
who were to be aided by the TratSeta; that the compilers of 
the great Compendia sorted according to the principle of 
bottles with bottles and powders with powders, and only 
paid attention to the necessities of packing; Alstedt and 
his followers sorted just like the druggist, according to the 
logical arrangement with regard to use in the schools ; while 
scientific Encyclopedists alone have taken into account the 
organism of science itself. Without doubt, a leading thought 
predominated in the first three assortments, but that leading 
thought was not inherent in the treasure of knowledge itself. 
It could be taken in one way as well as in another, and 
lacked the mark of necessity, while it did not take sufficient 
account of the fact that there is an inherent order in our 
knowledge itself. Just like the negro physician, they be- 
held flesh and bone, but failed to discern the bod^/ in them, 
and therefore could give no account of the skeleton, veins, 
and systems of muscles and nerves by which the whole 
was knit together. As soon, however, as it was seen that 
we need not bring order into our knowledge, but must 
merely trace out the order which is already in it. Encyclo- 
pedia became scientific. From being investigation into a 
mechanical arrangement, it now became the study of an 
organic life-relation. We now deal with a dominant prin- 
ciple, which of necessity, and according to a fixed law, has 
effected the organic relation, and in this way onl}^ the effort 
has been born not merely to indicate that relation, but also 
to trace out both that principle and its working. 



Chap. Ill] § 17. LIMITATION OF THE CONCEPTION 31 

§ 17. Limitation of the Conception 

From this it follows that the compilation of the rich mass 
of our knowledge into an alphabetical or systematic manual, 
when arranged alphabeticall}^, has nothing in common with 
Encyclopedia; and that even if this could be done system- 
atically, it would be the application of Encyclopedia to the 
exhibition of our knowledge, but could by no means be 
Encyclopedia itself. It likewise follows that a resumd of 
the most important data of our knowledge must no doubt 
deal with the results of Encyclopedia, but is not warranted in 
a single instance in bearing the name of Encyclopedia itself. 
And it also follows that the collection of the historia literaria 
for any department, and the indication of its auxiliaries, by 
itself has nothing in common with the science of Encyclo- 
pedia. Encyclopedic science is undoubtedly productive of 
fruits for such compendia and manuals, and is entitled to 
the distinction that the writers of such books deal with its 
results, but as a science it must be studied for its own sake. 
Its aim must ever be to grasp the inner organism of science 
as such. If indeed, as with other sciences, it was practical 
interests which impelled to this study, so that only after- 
wards the theory was discovered by which to reach the scien- 
tific method, this does by no means warrant the attempt to 
derive the conception of Encyclopedia from these first efforts. 
Here also the conception ripens only when Encyclopedia 
becomes conscious of the aim it has in view and has found 
the way by which to reach it. Whatever, therefore, in the 
several existing encyclopedias serves to provide material, or 
to indicate auxiliaries, or to simplify the review by means of 
summaries, does not belong to Encyclopedia proper. It is 
superfluous and troublesome ballast^ or it is the application 
of a result of Encyclopedia, while Encyclopedia proper has 
the floor only when science itself, in its organic existence, 
is the object of investigation, the aim of which is not to 
create order in the chaos, but to show that that which at first 
made the impression upon us of existing chaotically, appears 
on closer investigation to exist cosmically or organically. 



32 § 18. SUBDIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY [Div. I 

§ 18. Subdivision of Philosophy 

So much is gained by this for the conception of Encyclo- 
pedia, that now we understand by it that science which takes 
the organism of science itself for the object of its investiga- 
tion. This decides equally the question as to what place 
this science itself occupies in the unit of sciences. From 
this it appears that Medical Encyclopedia does not belong- 
to the medical sciences, that Theological Encyclopedia does 
not belong to the theological sciences, etc., but that all 
Encyclopedic study is philosophical^ and forms a subdivision 
of philosophy. As long as Encyclopedia was understood to 
be a real-lexicon or a manual for early beginners, this idea 
remained nebulous. In this sort of works the special 
content of every department was the main interest, and the 
Encyclopedic thought was seen only occasionally peering 
from behind the scenes. Thus Theological Encyclopedia 
was looked upon as a theological, and Juridical Ency- 
clopedia as a juridical, department, and the real nature of 
Encyclopedia was not grasped. But when it is once af- 
firmed that the special material but serves to discover the 
hidden relations in it, and is cast aside as soon as this is 
found, in order to keep these relations themselves as the 
object with which to deal, the philosophical character of 
Encyclopedia is hereby defined. Encyclopedia belongs then 
to those sciences by which man as a thinking being seeks 
to give himself an account of the world of his thoughts, and 
is, as such, a subdivision of philosophy. This would have 
been at once and clearly perceived if the Encyclopedic science 
could immediately have busied itself with the whole field of 
its investigation. No one would then have given general 
Encyclopedia a place elsewhere. And only the accidental 
circumstance that the study of this science had to begin with 
the special departments obscured the outlook. It cannot be 
denied that the subdivisions of every science belong to that 
science itself, and that thus the undeniably philosophical 
character of general Encyclopedia eo ipso asserts that all 
special Encyclopedic study belongs to philosophy. 



Chap. Ill] § 19. METHODOLOGY AXD HODEGETICS 33 

§ 19. Metliodology and Hodegetics 

The conception of Encyclopedia is allied to those of 
Methodology and Hodegetics^ which, though often taken for 
each other, are sharply distinguishable. Hodegetics points 
out the way to him to whom the way is unknown. The 
letter-carrier, who knows every inch of his way, takes no 
notice in his daily rounds of the sign-post at the cross-road. 
And the task of Hodegetics extends no further than showing 
the way in any department to whose study a man begins to 
devote himself. It acquaints him with the general features 
of the domain, tells him of the helps he is in need of in 
order to make advances, and points out to him the direction 
in which to go. Thus there belongs to it a short resume of 
the primitive data of every department; a reference to what 
composes its chief literature ; a brief review of its history ; a 
statement of its requirements: and an indication of the 
course of study to be pursued. Hodegetics teaches the 
theory of study to him who is not yet capable of study 
himself. 

Methodology^ on the other hand, is something very differ- 
ent. If Hodegetics serves the practical purpose of showing 
the inexperienced traveller the way that has already been 
discovered and cleared, Methodology, on the other hand, is 
the theoretical science which gives an account of the reason 
why this way was made thus and not otherwise, and decides 
the question whether there is any reason to change the way 
or its direction. This distinction is not always kept in 
sight, but it is real. Hodegetics assumes that the way is 
there, that it has been used, and points it out. Methodology, 
on the other hand, is the science which decides how the way 
is to be laid, and approves or disapproves of the way that has 
been laid. By "way" two things can here be understood. 
Either the way along which runs our thinking in this 
formal sense, or the way along which our thoughts must 
run in order to arrive at truth. In the first-mentioned 
sense Methodology forms a subdivision of Logic. In the 
last-mentioned sense it is an independent science which 



34 § 19. METHODOLOGY AND HODEGETICS [Div. I 

places the results of Logic into relation with the ramifica- 
tions of the several departments of science. He who de- 
sires to use a steamboat in the exploration of an unknown 
drainage system in Africa faces two questions of method: 
(1) how to convey his steamer thither and put it together 
again; and (2) how he will sail in the channels themselves 
of this drainage system in order to reach the mountains from 
which the stream descends. In scientific work our thinking 
is that steamer which must carry us forward, and the course 
of the drainage system indicates the method by which to 
advance with our thoughts. Every science, indeed, is such 
a dependent drainage system, which by the course of the 
principal stream and its ramifications determines the way 
along which knowledge of it is attained. 

The idea of method^ coinciding with that of fierep^o/JLac^ 
i.e. to trace, assumes that what we seek to discover by our 
thinking was thought before it originated, and that our 
effort is to think over again this original thought. When a 
Prussian general studies the fortification system of France's 
capital, he starts out from the assumption that the French 
soldiers who have built this system of fortifications have 
first thought out this system, and have afterwards built it 
agreeably to this studied plan. His aim, therefore, is to 
discover this plan, and this is only reached when he clearly 
grasps the original thought of the French engineer before 
he began to build. Only when he understands this original 
plan in its relations, does he know the Paris fortifications. 
Hence two methods are here involved. First, the method 
by which the French engineer built the fortifications, and 
secondly, the method of the Prussian general in discover- 
ing the fortifications' plan. The two are different. The 
method of him who built the fortifications developed itself 
from the principal thought he conceived in the drawing 
of his plan. The method of the discoverer, on the other 
hand, begins by viewing the forts and bulwarks of the 
outer lines, from thence proceeds to the second and third 
lines, and only from the relations of these several means 
of defence does he penetrate to the plan of the fortifica- 



Chap. Ill] § 19. METHODOLOGY AND HODEGETICS 35 

tions. But when the discoverer has once grasped this plan, 
he changes his method of thought to that of the engineer, 
and now takes up the proof of the sum, whether the location, 
the form, and the armament of the several bulwarks in each 
of the lines can be explained from the principal thought dis- 
covered. 

Mutatis mutandis^ this distinction between the method that 
lies in the object of investigation and the method by which 
we seek to obtain knowledge of this object, is applicable to 
every scientific investigation. In every object we are to 
grasp scientifically there must be a realized plan. Entirely 
independently of our thought a thinking motive is active in 
every object, and this motive impels the thought that lies 
in this object to proceed in a fixed track. This is the method 
that lies in the object itself, and with the knowledge of 
which w^e are concerned. But inasmuch as we have yet to 
penetrate from the circumference to the centre of this object, 
we must seek a method first by which from what we see to 
reach the hidden thought ; and only when this is found does 
our thinking move from the centre to the circumference and 
think indeed the thought over again which has embodied 
itself in the object to be investigated {fjLerepxeTai). In the 
main, therefore, we go first from without to within, and 
then from within back again to without, and both times we 
are bound to travel the way given in the object itself. 
Thus Methodology lays out for us the way along which to 
enter in upon the inner existence of the object, as well as 
the way along which we can understand the origin of this 
object. 

If, now, there were no obstacles in the way along which 
from phenomena we reach the inner existence of the object, 
this twofold task of Methodology would amount to doing 
the same thing twice, with the only difference of moving 
one time in an opposite direction from the other. Since, 
however, in the approach to the object all sorts of difficul- 
ties present themselves in the way, which rise partly from 
the observer and partly from the object to be observed, it is 
the task of Methodology to indicate how we can overcome 



36 §20. " WISSENSCHAFTSLEHRE " [Dir. I 

these difficulties ; or, where they are insuperable, to show us 
a side-road by which to reach our end. These difficulties, 
which differ with the several objects, compel Methodology 
to indicate a proper method for each of the several depart- 
ments of study, by which in each department the end can be 
reached. A general Methodology of sciences, therefore, is 
not enough. Methodology also must specialize itself, and 
since the special method for each department and each sub- 
division of a department is wholly governed by the Encyclo- 
pedic relation of the parts with the whole, Encyclopedia 
takes up into itself this special Methodology'. It can easily 
be separated from this connection for the entire group of 
departments, to serve as a department of general Method- 
ology ; but since the question of method returns with each 
subdivision of every department, a special Methodology 
would have to include the entire Encyclopedia of the depart- 
ment, in order to be intelligible and to justify itself. In 
one instance it would be an encyclopedic woof with a 
methodological warp, and in the other instance Methodology 
embroidered upon encyclopedic canvas. And, however real 
the difference is between the two, this difference is too 
insignificant to justify the trouble of a separate treatment. 

§20. ^''Wissenschaftslehre^^ 

Encyclopedia has incorrectly been confused with allgemeine 
Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte's title accounts for this. He 
himself describes the "Wissenschaftslehre" as a "Wissen 
vom TFmew," and consequently not "von der Wissenschaft.''^ 
"Allgfemeine lehre vom Wissen^^ would have been the more 
accurate name, and would have prevented misunderstanding. 
"Knowledge" and "science" are different things. Knowl- 
edge itself is a phenomenon in the human mind. Suppose 
an entire population in a college town were massacred ; there 
would be no more knowledge in that city ; for all knowledge 
assumes a living, thinking person who knows. But if the 
library had been spared, there would still be science to be 
found in that massacred town, because those books contain 
a whole mass of science. It is a very different thing, 



Chap. Ill] § 21. ORGANIC CHARACTER 37 

therefore, whether I investigate the formal phenomenon of 
knowledge as such, or scan science itself, as it exists organi- 
cally in all its ramifications, in its inner essence and articula- 
tion. Up to this point general Encyclopedia and " allgemeine 
Wissenschaftslehre" have nothing in common. What Fichte 
aimed at was the study of a phenomenon in our consciousness ; 
what Encyclopedia aims at is an analysis and synthesis of 
all sciences together, taken as one organic whole. This, 
however, is no warrant for overlooking the relation which 
unites the two and lies in the general conception of sci- 
ence that is fundamental to all special sciences. The bod}?- 
is both something different and something more than its 
members, and general Encyclopedia cannot be content with 
the investigation of the separate members of the body of 
science ; it must also deal with the science which finds its 
ramifications in the several special sciences. And when 
ready to undertake this, it of necessity touches "allgemeine 
Wissenschaftslehre," since this teaches " knowledge " in its 
most universal form, and thus offers it the means by which 
to define the character of science in its universal sense. 

§ 21. Organic Character 

If it is the task of Encyclopedia to furnish us knowledge 
of science as an organic whole, a clear insight into the voca- 
tion of Encyclopedia demands a distinction between the 
threefold organic nature of science. Botany, for instance, 
is an organic science: (1) because it introduces into the 
mirror of our thoughts a group of phenomena, which as 
"the vegetable kingdom" exists organically; (2) because it 
reflects this "vegetable kingdom" in a world of thoughts, 
which in its turn also classifies organically; and (3) because 
it does not introduce this "organic vegetable kingdom" 
absolutely into this organic "world of thought," but in 
organic connection with the life of man and animal. Thus 
every science has to do with a phenomenon which exists in 
itself organically and is organically related with other phe- 
nomena, while at the same time it must present the knowl- 
edge of this phenomenon in organic relation. If in our 



38 § 21. ORGANIC CHAEACTER [Diy. I 

thought we place a series of departments of science side 
by side, there is again a threefold relation among them : 
(1) since the objects with whose study these departments are 
concerned (Botany, Zoology, etc.) are organically related in 
life itself; (2) since the reflections of these objects do not 
lie loosely side by side in our mind, but also in the world 
of our thinking maintain an organic relation with each 
other; and (3) since the activities which go out from these 
objects upon life, are organically involved with one another. 
If now there were no unity in this threefold organic relation, 
we should have a threefold organic interpretation of science : 
the first according to the relation of phenomena, the second 
according to the relation of our thoughts, and the third 
according to the relation of the several ends at which our 
studies aim : or, more briefly still, we should have a phe- 
nomenal, a logical, and a practical interpretation. But this 
is not so. The organic inter-relations of phenomena cannot 
be grasped by us except as an outcome of an organic thought; 
the organic relation of what is known in our thoughts can- 
not assert its rights until it agrees with the organic inter- 
relation of the phenomena; and the workings of this 
knowledge upon our life stand in turn in relation both to 
the inter-relations of the phenomena and to our knowledge 
of those phenomena. History truly shows that the empiri- 
cal division of study (the phenomenal), with which all 
science began, and the theoretical (the logical), which only 
came later on, even as that of the university (in faculties), 
which, a few particulars excepted, kept equal step with the 
last-named, have amounted mainly in the end to a similar 
division of the sciences. 

But with reference to this point also Encyclopedia should 
reach self-consciousness, and give itself a clear account of 
the question what it understands by the organism of science. 
In which case it is self-evident that it cannot allow itself 
to be governed by the practical university division of the 
faculties, but that it must rather examine critically and 
correct them. And it lies equally near at hand that the 
phenomenon by itself should not be permitted to influence 



Chap. Ill] §22. STILL INCOMPLETE 39 

this division, since this is the very science that exhibits for 
the first time the organic relation of the phenomena. Hence 
Encyclopedia is not at liberty to deal with anything else 
save the organic relation in which the parts of the whole of 
our knowledge stand to each other. Science, in its absolute 
sense, is the pure and complete reflection of the cosmos in the 
human consciousness. As the parts of all actually exist- 
ing things lie in their relations, so must the parts of our 
knowledge be related in our consciousness. As a country 
is sketched on a chart, and we succeed ever better, as 
Cartography advances, in sketching the country upon the 
chart just as it is, so also must science convert the actually 
existing cosmos into the logical form. The further science 
advances, the easier it will be to reproduce the cosmos logi- 
cally, and to make all its parts to be clearly seen, together 
with their several relations. And thus science divides itself, 
because in proportion as the logical reproduction becomes 
more accurate, it will image in a more organic way whatever 
exists organically. And so does science begin to show itself 
to us as an immeasurable field, in which all sorts of divisions 
and subdivisions must be distinguished, and upon which the 
mutual relations among these divisions and life is ever more 
clearly exhibited. It is this organic relation with which 
Encyclopedia has to deal. The field of our knowledge itself 
in its organic inter-relations appears as the object to be inves- 
tigated by it. 

§ 22. Still Incomplete 

From the fact that the object is still incomplete flows 
of necessity the incompleteness of Encyclopedia. In the 
field of knowledge some ground is not yet broken, and 
other parts are but imperfectly known. And yet Encj'-clo- 
pedia must not wait until its object is completely ready, 
since science is in need of her assistance to get itself ready. 
Hence it must overcome its false modesty and present itself 
as it is, provided it but acknowledges its own imperfection 
and makes no pretension of being already the Encyclopedia. 
This involves the fact that every effort to furnish an Ency- 
clopedia must provisionally bear an individual character. If 



40 § 22. STILL INCOMPLETE [Div. I 

Encyclopedia could wait till every controversy concerning 
psychology, the way of knowledge, knowledge as such, 
were ended, and all contrasts of view in every special 
department had fallen away, an Encyclopedia might be 
spoken of which would compel every thinker to agree. 
Since, however, the field of knowledge is only known in 
part, and the psychological sciences are still at variance with 
each other, and since in every department the tendencies and 
schools are still in the heat of combat, no writer of Encyclo- 
pedia can carry an argument save from the view-point which 
he himself occupies and except he start out from the hypothe- 
ses upon which his general presentation is founded. There 
is no harm in this, since every other science actually goes to 
work in the same way, provided the view-point be properly 
defined and the end be held in sight of obtaining the Ency- 
clopedia in its absolute form. Otherwise we may get an 
Encyclopedic fantasy, but no contribution to the science of 
Encyclopedia. 

As long, however, as the logical sketch of the cosmos is 
only a partial success, the organic relation traced by our 
science will differ from the organic relation actually exist- 
ing in the cosmos ; wherefore Encyclopedia cannot deal with 
the latter, but is bound to turn its attention to the first. 
For the same reason it cannot justify its demand that the 
university division of faculties shall reform itself at once in 
obedience to its directions. This should certainly have to 
be done if it were already Encyclopedia in the absolute sense, 
but can not be demanded as long as it presents itself in a 
form that is so imperfect and individually colored. In life 
also lies a logic; and a logic lies equally in history; and 
from these two has sprung the university division. If 
Encyclopedia succeeds in effecting an influence upon life 
itself, by which it will gradually be persuaded to regulate 
its needs in a different way, the university division also will 
thereby be indirectly influenced and corrected. But then 
it will have stood the fire proof, and this will justify its 
demands. If, on the other hand, an attempt were made to 
influence directly by Encyclopedia the architect of the 



Chap. Ill] § 23. A THREEFOLD TASK 41 

university and persuade him to cut the tie that binds the 
university to life, it would result either in a pseudo-victory, 
or the university would be turned into an abstract schema- 
tism. This was the mistake committed by the Netherlands 
government, when, in 1878, at the suggestion of a one-sided 
Encyclopedia, it robbed the theological faculty in the State 
Universities of its historical character, and actually changed 
it into a school of the science of religion. Since from its 
very nature such a faculty is of no practical use to life, and 
as such has no susceptibility to life, the "officiousness of 
practical life " compelled a reaction against the aim of the 
lawgiver, and the demands of this one-sided Encyclopedia 
could be only apparently satisfied. It triumphed in the letter 
of the scheme, but actually and practically the right of his- 
tory maintained the supremacy. 

§ 23. A Threefold Task 

With this reservation it is the task of Encyclopedia to 
investigate the organism of science physiologically, ana- 
tomically and pathologically. Physiologically^ in order to 
enter into the nature of the life of every science and to trace 
out and define the function of each member in the body 
of sciences. Anatomically^ in order to exhibit the exact 
boundaries, divisions and relations of the several depart- 
ments and subdivisions of departments. Audi pathologically^ 
in order to bring to light the imperfection in the functioning 
of every science, to show its lack of accuracy in the fixing of 
the several relations, and to watch lest by hypertrophy or by 
atrophy the proper proportions should be lost between the 
development of the parts. Physiologically it clarifies the 
sense that must inspire every man in his own department, 
and rectifies the universally scientific sense. Anatomically 
it brings order into every study and defines the boundaries 
between the several studies. And pathologic-medically it 
arrests every error, inaccurate connection and unnatural 
development which combats the demand of the organic 
life of a science and of each of its parts. 



42 §25. PURELY FORMAL [Div. I 

§ 24. Method of Encyclopedia 

The only practicable method of general Encyclopedia is, 
that it should begin with the study of the historical develop- 
ment of the special sciences as they now are, and from this 
should endeavor to form for itself an image of the develop- 
ment of science in general. Then it should examine this 
historical phenomenon in order to understand the motive of 
science as such and the special motive of its several parts, and 
when it has thus fixed the idea of science and of its separate 
parts, it should investigate historically the ways by which it 
has progressed and the causes that have retarded or corrupted 
it. Having in this way succeeded historically in discovering 
the essential nature of its object, and the law of this object's 
life, Encyclopedia should then proceed to investigate in the 
same way each of the parts and to determine the organic rela- 
tion between them. And having in this way obtained a clear 
representation of what the organism of science is, how its 
functions operate and its parts cohere, with this result in 
hand it should criticise the actual study of science. Its 
point of departure must be historical. From what has been 
historically discovered it must develop its idea. And with 
this standard in hand it must prosecute its task both as critic 
and physician. 

§ 25. Purely Formal 

This answers of itself the question to what extent En- 
cyclopedia is to concern itself with the material of each 
science. It is not its task to furnish the body of science 
itself, but to point out the organic relations in this body, to 
demonstrate them, and, in case of error, to reestablish their 
proper location. Encyclopedia does not build the body of 
science, neither does it reproduce it, but it begins by view- 
ing this body of science as given; and its task is merely 
to show that it is a body, and how, as a body, it exists. 
The Physiologist does not bring the blood into the body, 
neither does he reproduce it, neither is it his calling 
to investigate the whole quantity of blood. His calling 
limits itself to the examination of blood as such, in its com- 



Chap. Ill] § 26. RESULT 43 

position, origin, function and pathological deformation. 
So far as there occur variations in this mass of blood, he is 
bound to give himself an account of each one of these varia- 
tions ; but so far as the similar is concerned, he is interested 
only in the disposition of one of these similar phenomena. 
And this is the case with the Encyclopedist. He assumes 
that the material of science is known. He does not create 
nor reproduce it, neither does he add to it. But in this 
multitudinous material he looks for the network that binds 
the groups of similar parts to each other. His study extends 
all the way of this network in its length and in its breadth, 
but where this network disappears in common material his 
investigation ends. Hence no division or subdivision in all 
the material of science can be so small but that, as long as 
it forms a separate group or member in the organism, he 
must study it out. The active working only of the organism 
upon the material is to be investigated by him, and not the 
result obtained by this organic function. Thus in scientific 
Encyclopedia that shall be worthy of the name, there will be 
no room for the content itself of the separate sciences, and 
not even for a brief summary of their results. The material 
must remain entirely excluded, and only the formal part of 
each science must be exhibited. 

§ 26. Result 

The result of our investigation is, that by Encyclopedia we 
understand that philosophical science which in the entire 
thesaurus of our scientific knowledge thus far acquired 
exhibits and interprets the organic existence of science and 
of its several parts. This conception of Encyclopedia, which 
has been arrived at historically, dialectically and by means 
of distinction from the correlated conceptions, excludes 
therefore all realistic treatment of the material, and con- 
centrates Encyclopedia upon the formal side of science. 
Realistic Encyclopedia is no Encyclopedia. Formal Ency- 
clopedia alone is entitled to bear this name in the scientific 
sense. In this sense this acquired conception applies as 
well to general Encyclopedia as to Encyclopedia of s^yedal 



44 § 26. RESULT [Div. I 

departments, even though it lies in the nature of the case 
that general Encyclopedia, because it is general, limits itself 
to the principal ramifications of the organism of science, and 
leaves the detailed ramifications of each group and its sub- 
divisions to the study of special Encyclopedia. General 
Botany has nothing to do with the variations of the species 
rosa into tree roses, monthly roses, provincial roses, or tea 
roses. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA 

§ 27. Two Difficulties 

And now, as we come to the conception of that special 
Encyclopedia called Theological, the simple application to 
Theology of what was obtained for the conception of General 
Encyclopedia will not suffice. There would be no objection 
to this in the cases of the Encyclopedias of the Juridical or 
Philological sciences, but in the case of that of Theology 
there is. The reason of this lies in the two circumstances: 
first, that the scientific character of Theology is disputed by 
many ; and, secondly, that they who do not dispute this are 
disagreed as to what is to be understood by Theology. 
Dr. Rabiger, who has referred to this difficulty in his 
Theologik oder Enc. der Theol.^ Lpz. 1880, p. 94, incorrectly 
inferred from it that for this reason, before its object can 
be ready, the Encyclopedia of science must create for itself 
from these several Theologies a general conception of The- 
ology, in order that it may make this general conception 
of Theology the subject of scientific study. This is not 
possible, since then Encyclopedia would have the right of 
judgment between the several Theologies ; it should have 
to furnish a complete demonstration for the sake of sup- 
porting this judgment ; and thus it would have to investi- 
gate independently all the formal and material questions 
which are variously solved in Theology. In this way it 
would have to treat the leading departments of Theology 
fundamentally, and, dissolving into dogmatics, apologetics, 
church history, etc., would cease to be Encyclopedia. It 
would then bring forth its own object, instead of studying a 
given object. And, worse yet, he who would write such an 

45 



46 § 28. THE FIRST DIFFICULTY [Diy. I 

Encyclopedia would not be able to escape from his own per- 
sonality nor from the view-point held by himself. His criti- 
cism, therefore, would amount to this : he who agreed with 
him would be right, he who disagreed wrong, and the result 
would be that he would award the honorary title of general 
Theology to that particular Theology to which he had com- 
mitted himself. A general Theology would then be exhib- 
ited, and, back of this beautiful exterior, the subjective 
view-point, which was said to be avoided, would govern the 
entire exposition. 

§ 28. The First Difficulty 

If both difficulties that here present themselves are 
squarely looked in the face, it must at once be granted 
that before Theological Encyclopedia can devote itself to 
its real task, it must vindicate the scientific character of 
Theology. This is not the creation of an object of its own, 
but the simple demonstration of the fact that Theology is a 
proper object of Encyclopedic investigation. If all Ency- 
clopedia is the investigation of the whole or of a part of the 
organism of science, no Encyclopedia of Theology can be 
suggested as long as it is still uncertain whether Theology 
forms a part of this organism. Since, now, the doubt con- 
cerning the scientific character of Theology does not spring 
from the still imperfect development of this science, but 
finds its origin in the peculiar character it bears in distinc- 
tion from all other sciences, it is the duty of the writer of 
an Encyclopedia of this science to show upon what grounds 
he disputes this doubt as to its right of existence. This 
demonstration must be given in two ways. First, by such 
definitions of the conception " science," and of the conception 
" Theology," that it will be evident that the second is sub- 
ordinate to the first. And, secondly, by showing that the 
parts of Theology are mutually related organically, and that, 
taken as a whole, it stands in organic relation to the rest of 
the organism of science. This treatise also will venture the 
effort to furnish this double proof. 

The first only of these two proofs is demanded by the 



Chap. IV] § 29. THE SECOND DIFFICULTY 47 

peculiar character of Theology. The second proof that the 
parts of a special science mutually cohere organically, and 
together are related equally organically to the whole of 
science, every special Encyclopedia of whatever science 
undertakes to show. But the first proof that the conception 
of this special science is subordinate to the conception of 
general science does not occur in other special Encyclo- 
pedias, because with the other sciences this subordination 
is evident of itself and is by no one denied. 

§ 29. The Second Difficulty 

The second difficulty should be considered somewhat more 
at length. It presents itself in the fact that all sorts of 
Theologies offer themselves as the object of investigation to 
the writer of an Encyclopedic Theology. There is a Greek 
Theology, and a Romish Theology, a Lutheran, Reformed, 
and a Modern Theology, a " Vermittelungstheologie," and, 
in an individual sense, we even hear a Schleiermachian, a 
Ritschlian, etc., Theology spoken of. Order, therefore, is 
to be introduced into this chaos. Simply to make a choice 
from among this number would be unscientific. Where 
choice is made its necessity must be shown. Even the 
Romish theologian, who looks upon every other Theology 
save that of his own church as the exposition of error, can- 
not escape from the duty of scientific proof of this position. 
If it involved merely a difference between several " schools," 
it might be proper to select out of these several interpreta- 
tions what is common to them all, and thus to conclude the 
existence of a general Theology. But this is not so. The 
difference here springs not from a difference of method in the 
investigation of one and the same object, but from a difference 
concerning the question of what the object of Theology is. 
One Theology investigates a different object from another. 
One Theology denies the very existence of the object which 
another Theology investigates. Even if we could agree 
upon the methods of investigation it would be of no use, for 
though the merits of your method were recognized, the 
objection would still hold good that you apply your method 



48 § 29. THE SECOND DIFFICULTY [Div. T 

to a pseudo-object, which has no existence outside of your 
imagination. This springs from the fact that the object of 
Theology lies closely interwoven with our subjectivity, and is 
therefore incapable of being absolutely objectified. A blind 
man is no more able to furnish a scientific study of the phe- 
nomenon of color, or a deaf person to develop a theory of 
music, than a scholar whose organ for the world of the 
divine has become inactive or defective is capable of furnish- 
ing a theological study, simply because he has none other 
than a hearsay knowledge of the object Theology investi- 
gates. Hence no escape is here possible from the refraction 
of subjectivity. This should the more seriously be taken into 
our account because this refraction springs not merely from 
the circumference of our subjective existence, but is organi- 
cally related to the deepest root of our life and to the very 
foundation of our consciousness. Whether this impossibility 
of completely objectifying the object of Theology does or does 
not destroy the scientific character of Theology can only later 
on be investigated ; here we do not deal with the object of 
Theology but with Theology itself as object of Theological 
Encyclopedia ; and of this it is evident that Theology itself 
cannot be presented as an absolute and constant object, be- 
cause its own object cannot escape from the refraction of 
our subjectivity. If a scientific investigator, and in casu the 
writer of an Encyclopedia, could investigate his object with- 
out himself believing in the existence of his object, it might 
be possible for the Encyclopedist at least to keep himself 
outside of this difference. But this is out of the question. 
Faith in the existence of the object to be investigated is the 
conditio sine qua non of all scientific investigation. No theo- 
logical Encyclopedist is conceivable except one to whom 
Theology has existence, neither can Theology have existence 
to him unless it also has an object in whose reality he equally 
believes. As an actual fact it is seen that all writers of 
Theological Encyclopedias take for their object of investiga- 
tion that which they conceive to be Theology, and also that 
every theologian assumes something as object of Theology 
which to him has real existence. Thus one link locks into 



Chap. IV] § 30. NO ONE-SIDEDNESS 49 

the other. To be able to write an Encyclopedia of Theology 
it must be fixed beforehand what you conceive to be Theol- 
ogy ; and in order to know which of the several theologies 
that present themselves shall be your Theology, it must first 
be determined what the object is which you give Theology to 
investigate. It is evident therefore that the theological En- 
cyclopedist cannot possibly furnish anything but an Ency- 
clopedia of his Theology. For though this may be denied, 
and it be made to appear that a Theological Encyclopedia 
in the general sense is given, the outcome always shows 
that in reality the writer claims universal validity for his 
Theology. 

§ 30. No One-sidedness 

This is a self-deception which nevertheless contains a germ 
of truth. If in order to be a theologian one must believe in 
the existence of the object of his Theology, the claim is of 
itself implied that what he takes to be valid must also be 
valid to every one else. This is no presumption, but only 
the immediate result of the firmness of conviction which is 
the motive for his scientific investigation. All scepticism 
causes science to wither. But from this there flows an 
obligation. Just this : to point out in the other theologies 
what is untenable and inconsequent^ to appreciate what is 
relatively true^ and to a, certain extent to show the necessity 
of their existence. No one Theology can claim to be all-sided 
and completely developed. This is not possible, because 
every Theology has to deal with an object that is not suscep- 
tible to an abstract intellectual treatment, and which can 
therefore only be known in connection with its historical 
development in life. Aberrations very certainly occur which 
furnish only negative or reactionary results for the knowl- 
edge of the object of Theology, and these can only be 
refuted. But there are also elements in this object of The- 
ology, which do not find an equally good soil for their devel- 
opment with every individual, with every nation, or in every 
age. Every theologian, therefore, knows that neither he 
himself, nor the stream of history in which he moves, are 



50 § 31. VIEW-POINT HEKE TAKEN [Div. I 

able to make an all-sided and a complete exhibition of the 
object of his investigation. 

Thus to him also there are theologies which are not simply 
aberrations but merely one-sided developments, whose rela- 
tive validity he appreciates and with whose results he 
enriches himself. But even that which is relatively true 
and complementary in other theologies he is not allowed to 
leave standing loosely by the side of his own theology, but 
is bound to include it organically in his own theology, being 
ever deeply convinced of the fact that in spite of their 
relative right and complementary value these other theologies 
interpret the essence of Theology one-sidedly and understand 
it wrongly. Thus the aim is always to show in a scientific 
way that the Theology that has the love of Ms heart is 
entitled to the love of all hearts, wherefore he corrects and 
enriches his own Theology with whatever acquisitions he can 
borrow from the other theologies in order thereby to vindi- 
cate the more effectively the universal validity of his object 
of Theology. No reduction therefore is practised of the 
several theologies to a common level, for the mere sake of 
investigating encyclopedically what is common to them all ; 
but on the contrary the start is taken from one's own con- 
viction, with an open eye to one's own imperfections so as 
sincerely to appreciate the labors and efforts of others, and 
to be bent upon the assimilation of their results. 

§ 31. View-point here taken 

This attempt to write a Theological Encyclopedia, too, 
purposely avoids therefore every appearance of neutrality, 
which is after all bound to be dishonest at heart ; and makes 
no secret of what will appear from every page, that the Re- 
formed Theology is here accepted as the Theology, in its very 
purest form. By this we do not mean to imply that the Re- 
formed theologians are to us the best theologians, but we 
merely state, that Reformed Theology, 1, has interpreted the 
object of Theology most accurately, and 2, has shown the way 
most clearly by which to reach knowledge of this object. Let 
no one take this statement to intend the least infringement 



Chap. IV] § 31. VTE^Y-POINT HERE TAKEN 51 

upon the respect which the writer of this Encyclopedia is also 
compelled to pay to the gigantic labors of Lutheran, Romish, 
and other theologians. His declaration but intends to make 
it clearly known, that he himself cannot stand indifferently 
to his personal faith, and to his consequent confession con- 
cerning the object of TJieology^ and therefore does not hesitate 
to state it as his conviction that the Reformed Theology with 
respect to this has grasped the truth most firmly. 

Does this put a confessional stamp upon this Encyclo- 
pedia ? By no means; since " confessional " and " scientific" 
are heterogeneous conceptions. " Confessional" is the name 
that belongs to the several streams in the historical life of 
the Church, and is no distinguishing mark for your manner 
of scientific treatment of the theological material. The 
difference lies elsewhere. The fact is that until the middle 
of the last century Theology received its impulse from the 
Church, in consequence of which Theology divided itself into 
groups which maintained their relation to the groupings of 
the churches according to their confessions. Since that 
time, however. Theology has not allowed itself to be gov- 
erned by the life of the Church, but by the mighty develop- 
ment of philosophy, and consequently we scarcely speak in 
our days of a Lutheran, Romish, or Reformed Theology, but of 
a rationalistic, a mediating, and an orthodox Theology. With 
this custom this Encyclopedia does not sympathize, but takes 
it as a matter of course that even as the medical, juridical, 
and philological sciences, the theological science also is 
bound to its object such as this shows itself in its own circle 
in life; i.e. in casu the Church. Every other grouping of 
theological schools rests upon a philosophical abstraction 
which really ranks Theology under philosophy or under 
history and ethnology, and in that way destroys it as an 
independent science. Hence our aim is to seek the object 
of Theology again in its native soil ; to examine no piece 
of polished cedar in the wall, but the tree itself on Lebanon ; 
and in this way also to study the object of Theology in the 
history of the Church. 

But even thus the choice of the Reformed stamp is not 



52 § 32. COMPASS OF ITS TASK [Div. I 

yet scientifically justified. The Encyclopedia obtains its 
right to this only when it shows that the historical distinc- 
tion between Romish, Reformed, etc.. Theology flows of 
necessity from the very essence of Theology, and that the 
current distinctions of our times are foreign to its essence 
and are attached to it from without. And thus every 
Encyclopedical writer is entitled and obliged in his Ency- 
clopedia to honor as Theology whatever is Theology to him- 
self^ but this should be done in such a way that he shows 
how with this interpretation the organic character of this 
science is best exhibited. 

§ 32. Compass of its Task 

On this condition it is the task of Theological Encyclo- 
pedia : 1, to vindicate the scientific character of Theology; 
2, to explain the relation between Theological science and 
the other sciences ; 3, in its own choice of the object of 
Theology to exhibit the error in the choice of others, and to 
appreciate what is right in the efforts of others and to appro- 
priate it ; and then, 4, to do for Theology what it is the 
task of general Encyclopedia to do for science in general. 

With reference to the first point, Dr. Rabiger goes too far 
when (p. 95) he says : " The only problem of Theological En- 
cyclopedia is to build up Theology as a science.''^ It certainly 
has more to do than this. It can even be said that only 
after this task has been performed does its real Encyclopedic 
task begin. If Encyclopedia is truly the science of science, 
everything that is done to place the science as object before 
oneself is only preparatory work. Only when Theology 
lies before you as a science does your real Encyclopedic 
study begin. His proposition therefore to give the name 
of " Theologik " to Theological Encyclopedia will not do. 
"Theologik" isolates Theology from the organism of the 
sciences, and the very point in hand is to grasp the science 
of Theology as an organic member of the body of sciences. 
This is expressed by the word Encyclopedia alone, for which 
reason the name of Theological Encyclopedia can under no 
consideration be abandoned. From this follows also the 



Chap. IV] § 33. ITS RELATION TO METHODOLOGY 53 

second point already indicated. Theological Encyclopedia 
must insert Theology organically into the body of sciences ; 
which duty has too largely been neglected not only in the 
special Encyclopedias of Theology, but in those of almost all 
the special sciences. The third point follows of itself from 
§ 31, and calls for no further explanation. And as regards 
the fourth, this flows directly from the subordination of the 
conception of Theological Encyclopedia to that of general 
Encyclopedia. 

§ 33. Its Relation to Methodology 

This task includes of itself the scientific description of the 
method of Theology, and of its parts, and its insertion into 
organic relation with its object. No general Methodology is 
necessary, for this may be assumed to be known. But it must 
show the paths of knowledge, mapped out by general Meth- 
odology, which Theology is to travel in order to reach her end. 
Then it must show what modifications are introduced into 
this general method by the peculiar character of Theology. 
And finally, what nearer method flows from this for the sub- 
divisions of Theology. There is no cause for a separate 
treatment of Theological Methodology. He who places it as 
a separate study outside of his Encyclopedia, must invoke its 
help in that Encyclopedia ; neither can he furnish his Meth- 
odology without repeating the larger part of the content 
of his Encyclopedia. Just because of the strongly subjec- 
tive character which is inseparable from all Theology, it is 
dangerous to separate the method too widely from the object, 
neither can the object be sufficiently explained without deal- 
ing at the same time with the method. Hence it should be 
preferred to treat the method of Theology taken as a whole 
in the general volume of the Encyclopedia, and then, so far 
as this is necessary with each subdivision, the modifications 
which this method undergoes for the sake of this subdivision. 



54 §35. EESULT [Div. I 

§ 34. Its Aim 

The aim of Theological Encyclopedia is in itself purely 
scientific. Since Theology belongs to the organism of sci- 
ence, the Encyclopedic impulse itself compels the investi- 
gation of this part also of the great organism of science, in 
order that we may know it in its organic coherence and rela- 
tion. This is its philosophical aim. But its aim is equally 
strong to bring Theology itself to self -consciousness. No 
more than any other science did Theology begin with know- 
ing what it wanted. Practical interests, necessity and un- 
conscious impulse brought it to its development. But with 
this it cannot remain satisfied. For its own honor's sake, 
Theology also must advance with steady steps to know itself, 
and to give itself an account of its nature and its calling. 
This is the more necessary since in our times Theology as a 
whole is no longer studied by any one, and since the several 
theologians choose for themselves but a part of the great task. 
Thus every sense of relation is lost, and a writer in one 
department infringes continually upon the rights of the 
others, unless the isense of the general task of Theology 
becomes and remains quickened. In the third place, the aim 
of Encyclopedia of Theology is defensive or apologetic. 
Much presents itself as Theology with the assumption of the 
right to translate real Theology into that which is no Theol- 
ogy. The conflict which arises from this may not be left to 
chance, but must be decided scientifically, and this cannot 
take place until Theology fixes its scientific standard. And 
finally its aim in the fourth place is, for the sake of non- 
theologians, who must nevertheless deal with Theology, to 
declare, in scientifically connected terms, what Theology is. 

§ 35. Result 

As the result of the above it is evident that the conception 
of Theological Encyclopedia consists in the scientific investiga- 
tion of the organic nature and relations of Theology in itself 
and as an integral part of the organism of science. As such 
it forms a subdivision of general Encyclopedia, and with it 



Chap. IV] § 35. RESULT 55 

belongs to the science of philosophy. As such it is formal^ 
not in the sense that it must furnish a mere scheme of de- 
partments and of names, but in the sense that it is not 
allowed to become material, as if it were its duty to collect 
the theological content in a manual. It may enter into the 
material only in so far as it is necessary for the sake of ex- 
hibiting the formal nature and relations of Theology. Dis- 
tinguished from Hodegetics and Historia litteraria, it is not 
called upon to furnish a manual for beginners ; though noth- 
ing forbids the addition to it of a brief historia Utteraria, pro- 
vided that this is not presented as a part of the Encyclopedia 
itself. 



DIVISION II 
THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE 



-OOjO:J<X>- 



§ 36. Litroduetion 

It is the task of Theological Encyclopedia to investigate 
the nature of Theology for the stated purposes of under- 
standing it, of passing criticism upon its progress, and of 
assisting its healthful development. It is not sufficient that 
it answer the question, What Theology is ; it must also 
critically examine the studies that have thus far been be- 
stowed upon Theology, and mark out the course henceforth 
to be pursued. This investigation would bear no scientific 
character, and consequently would not be Encyclopedic, if 
Theology were merely a private pursuit of individuals. 
Now, however, it is both, because Theology presents an 
interest that engages the human mind as such. We face 
a phenomenon that extends across the ages, and has engaged 
many persons, and therefore cannot be the outcome of a 
whim or notion, nor yet of an agreement or common contract, 
but is governed by a motive of its own, which has worked 
upon these persons in all ages. This motive cannot lie 
elsewhere than in the human mind; and if a certain regu- 
larity, order and perceptible development are clearly mani- 
fest in these theological studies, as prosecuted in whatever 
period and by whatever persons, it follows that this motive, 
by which the human mind is impelled to theological investi- 
gation, not only formally demands such an investigation, but 
is bound to govern the content and the tendency of these 
studies. Distinction therefore must be made between the 
theological study of individual theologians and the impulse 

56 



Div. II] § 36. INTRODUCTION 57 

of Theology which they obeyed consciously or unconsciously, 
entirely or in part. This theological impulse is the general 
phenomenon, which is certainly exhibited in special theologi- 
cal studies, but never exhausts itself in them. This general 
phenomenon lies behind and above its temporal and individ- 
ual revelations. It is not the excogitation of an individual 
man, but men have found it in the human mind. Neither 
was it found as an indifferent something, but as something 
definite in essence and tendency ; in virtue of which it can 
and must be included in the investigation of science as 
a whole. This very distinction, however, between the 
theological motive in general and the effect of this motive 
upon the individual theologian, presents both the danger and 
the probability that the study of Theology will encounter 
influences that are antagonistic to this' motive ; which diver- 
gence will of necessity cause it to become bastardized and 
the mutual relation of these studies to suffer loss. With this 
motive itself, therefore, the impulse of criticism is given, and 
the scientific investigation into the essence of Theology 
would never be finished, if it did not inquire as to how far 
this motive had been allowed to exert itself, and in what 
way it is to continue its task. 

Technically, therefore, encyclopedical investigation would 
be prosecuted most accurately if the essence of Theology 
could first be determined thetically ; if, after that, empirical 
Theology could be compared with this ; and if the means could 
be indicated therapeutically by which to make and maintain 
the healthful development of Theology. But to follow out 
this scheme would be unwise for three reasons. In the first 
place, the thetic result cannot be found except in consulta- 
tion with empiricism, and this calls in the aid of the devia- 
tions as antitheses for the definition of the conception. In 
the second place, with Theology in general, and afterwards 
with each of its parts, a continuous repetition of consonant 
criticism could not be avoided. And in the third place, the 
thetical, critical and therapeutical or dietetical treatment of 
each department would be torn altogether out of relation 
and come in order at three entirely different places. This 



58 § 36. INTRODUCTION [Div. II 

necessitates the sacrifice of technical accuracy to the de- 
mands of a practical treatment ; and the arrangement of the 
division of the investigation in the order of importance. 
Hence in this Encyclopedia also the real investigation divides 
itself into two parts, the first of which deals with Theology 
as such, while the second reviews her subdivisions. And 
the end of each aim is : to understand Theology as such, and 
her parts, organically. Encyclopedia may not rest until it 
has grasped Theology as an organic part of general science, 
and has examined the departments of exegesis, church history, 
etc., as organic parts of the science of Theology. 

If all investigators were fully agreed among themselves as 
to the nature and the conception of science^ we could at once 
start out from this fixed datum and indicate what place 
Theology occupies in the sphere of science, and press the 
claims she ought to satisfy. But this is not the case. Not 
only is the conception of science very uncertain, but the very 
relation sustained by the several thinkers to Theology and 
its object exercises frequently a preponderating influence 
upon the definition of the conception of science. There can 
be no clearness, therefore, in an encyclopedical exposition 
until it is definitely stated what the writer understands by 
science and by its prosecution in general. And for this 
reason this investigation into the nature of Theology begins 
with a summary treatment of science and its prosecution. 
The organism of science itself must be clearly outlined, 
before the place which Theology occupies in it can be deter- 
mined. 



CHAPTER I 

THE CONCEPTION OF SCIENCE 

§ 37. Etyjnology and Accepted Use of the Word 

The plan of a Theological Encyclopedia does not admit an 
exposition of the principles of the " doctrine of science " ; 
but neither will it do to describe the nature of Theology as 
a science, until the conception of " science " is determined. 
In yiew of the very prevalent confusion with reference to 
this conception, the writer of a Theological Encyclopedia 
should clearly define what he understands by it. 

Etymologically it is fairly certain that to know^ as an intel- 
lectual conception is derived from the sensual conception to 
see ; and more particularly from seeing something one was 
looking for in the sense of finding. This may the more fully 
be emphasized, because not only the Indo-Germanic but also 
the Semitic family of languages point to this origin of the 
conception to know. The Sanscrit has vid, to know ; vindami, 
to find; the Greek ftS in etSov^ to see, alongside of ol8a, to 
know ; the Latin vid-ere, to see, alongside of viso, to visit ; 
the Gothic vait, to know, alongside of vit-an, to keep what 
one has found ; and the Old Slavic vid-e-ti, to see, alongside 
of ved-e-ti, to know. This development of the conception 
runs almost parallel with that of the Semitic root vadd (!?^1) 
which, just as in the so-called Pelasgic vid stands alongside 
of id, shows the double form of vadd and iadd (^T). This 
vadd or iada' also is the common word for to know, but with, 
the root-meaning of to see. In 1 Sam. x. 11 and in Job xxviii. 

1 [That is, the Dutch loeten, which runs back to a base wit, = originally 
'to see.'' The English representatives of the root are such as 'wit,' 'wot,' 
'witness'; and also such words as 'wise,' 'guise,' 'vision,' ' visible,' 'idea,' 
etc.] 

59 



60 § 37. ETYMOLOGY AND [Div. II 

13 the LXX translated it by the word ISelv^ to see. Along- 
side of 'jyDtr (to hear) as perception through the ear, stands 
!?n^ (to see) as perception through the eye. D1W T]^"! in 
Gen. xxxvii. 14 and Dl'?^ VT in Esther ii. 11 are in mean- 
ing one. The entirely different meaning attributed to 'J^T by 
Fiirst and others in Ezek. xxxviii. 14, as if the idea to separate, 
split or disband were prominent, might yet originally have 
coincided with the meaning of the verb to see, even as cernere 
in its connection with Kpivav. But if on this ground the con- 
nection between the conceptions to know and to see can scarcely 
be denied, the verb to know cannot be said to be of the same 
origin with all the forms of the idea to see. To see is a finely 
differentiated conception. 'Opav, ^XeireLv, o-^ofxai, Oedofiai, 
hehopKGvai, -spicere, aKeir- (in crKeirTeG-OaC)^ etc., all express a 
certain perception through the eye, but in different ways. An 
object can present itself to us in such a way, that we perceive 
it and thus see it, while our eye did not look for it. At 
another time our eyes may look without desiring to discover 
any one object. And lastly there is a looking, by which we 
employ our powers of vision in seeking and investigating a 
definite object, until we find and understand it. The con- 
ception of the verb to see, included in the root of the verb to 
know, is definitely this last kind of seeing : premeditatively 
to look for something, in order to find it. Herein lies of 
itself the transition to the conceptions of investigation and 
of trying to know, as result of which we have the seeing or 
knowing. Revelation in holy Scripture throws further light 
upon this relation by placing before us the yvaxn^; as a lower 
form of knowing, and as a pKeireaOai but only in part, in a 
glass darkly, and over against this making the completed 
yvMori'; to appear as a deacOai, a seeing close at hand, in full 
reality, TrpoacoTrov tt/oo? irpoaoiTrov (1 Cor. xiii. 8-12). 

If in the second place we consult the accepted use of the 
word, we find the conceptions of knowing and understanding 
separated from each other by a clearly perceptible boundary. 
The accepted use of the word to know has both a general 
and a limited sense. In the question. Do you know that the 
mail-boat has suffered shipwreck ? is only meant. Have you 



Chap. I] ACcA*TED USE OF THE WORD 61 

heard it ? Is this fact taken up into your consciousness ? If, 
on the other hand, I say, Bo you know that it is so P then to 
know is taken in a stricter sense, and means : Can you vouch 
for it ? In both cases, however, there lies in this knowing not 
so much the thought of an analysis of the content of an affair or 
fact, as the thought of the existence of it ; viz. the antithesis 
between its being and not being. Understanding, on the other 
hand, does not refer to the being or not being, but assumes it 
as a fact, and analyzes it for the sake of introducing it into 
the world of our conceptions. To have knowledge of a 
thing is almost synonymous with having certainty of it, 
which of itself implies that such a presentation of the matter 
or fact has been obtained that it can be taken up into our 
consciousness. And further it is knowledge only when be- 
sides this presentation in my consciousness I also have the 
sense that this representation corresponds to existing reality ; 
which is entirely different from understanding, by which I 
investigate this representation, in order to comprehend it 
in its nature and necessity. 

If we compare this with the common acceptation of the 
word science, we encounter the apparent contradiction that 
what is commonly called " science " seems to lie almost 
exclusively in the domain of the understanding, and that 
when the question is asked whether there is a reality cor- 
responding to a certain representation, it is met with the 
answer. It is not clear (non liquet) ; even with a fundamental 
non liquet, when the general relation of the phenomena to 
the noumena is in order. This, however, is only in appear- 
ance. For many centuries the conception of science and its 
corresponding forms in other languages was entirely free 
from sceptical infusion, and carried no other impression 
than of studies which were able to impart real knowledge 
of all sorts of things, so that by it one knew what before 
one did not know. The " language-making people " ad- 
hered, therefore, strenuously to the root-meaning of the 
verbs to see and to know, even in the derived conception of 
" science," and marked this more clearly still by the an- 
tithesis between "science" and "learning." The law of 



62 § 37. ETYMOLOGY AND [Dir. II 

language requires that " science " shall make us know what 
there is, that it is there, and how it is there. That the men 
of " science " themselves have adopted this name, and have 
preferred to drop all other names, especially that of Philoso- 
phy, only shows that they were not so much impelled by the 
desire to investigate, as by the desire to know for them- 
selves and to make real knowledge possible for others ; 
and that indeed a knowledge so clear and transparent 
that the scaffoldings, which at first were indispensable, can 
at last be entirely removed, and the figure be unveiled and 
seen. However keenly it may be felt that under present 
conditions this result, in its highest significance, lies beyond 
our reach, the ideal should not be abandoned, least of all in 
common parlance. There is in us a thirst after a knowledge 
of things which shall be the outcome of immediate sight, 
even if this sight takes place without the bodily eye. And 
since we are denied this satisfaction in our present dispensa- 
tion, God's word opens the outlook before us in which this 
immediate seeing of the heart of things, this OeaaOac, this see- 
ing of face to face, shall be the characteristic of our knowl- 
edge in another sphere of reality. The accepted use of the 
word which holds on to the conception of sight in knowledge 
agrees entirely with Revelation, which points us to a science 
that shall consist in sight. 

The objection that, when interpreted in relation to its 
etymology and accepted use of the word, "science" is syn- 
onymous with " truth," ^ stands no test. In the first place, 
the root of this word, ver-, which also occurs in ver-um, in 
ver-hum, in word, in fepelv, etc., does not point to what is 
seen or known, but to what is spoken. This derivation dis- 
courages, at the same time, the growing habit of relating 
truth to a condition or to a moral disposition, and of speak- 
ing of a thing or of a person as "being real." Truth, more- 
over, is always an antithetical conception, which science 
never is. The thirst after knowledge has its rise in our 
desire to reflect in our consciousness everything that exists, 
while the thirst after truth originates from the desire to 

1 [That is '■ imarheid,^ the Dutch word for 'truth.' — Translator.'] 



Chap. I] ACCEPTED USE OF THE WORD 63 

banish from our consciousness whatever represents existing 
things as other than they are. In a pregnant sense, as will 
be shown more at length in another place, truth stands over 
against falsehood. Even when truth is sought in order to 
avoid or to combat an unintentional mistake, or an illusion 
arisen in good faith or an inaccuracy which is the result of 
an insufficient investigation, there always is an antithesis 
w^hich belongs to the nature of this conception. If there 
were no falsehood conceivable, or mistake, illusion or inaccu- 
racy, there would be no thirst after truth. The facts that 
science seeks after truth, and that truth is of supremest 
importance to it, do not state its fundamental thought, — 
which is and always will be, the knowledge of what is, that 
it is, and how it is. And this effort assumes the form of 
"seeking after truth" only as far as, for the sake of dis- 
covering what is, it has to dismiss all sorts of false repre- 
sentations. In such a state of things as is pictured by Reve- 
lation in the realm of glory, the desire to see and to know is 
equally active ; there, of course, through immediate percep- 
tion ; while the antithesis between falsehood, mistake, illusion, 
inaccuracy and truth shall fall entirely away. 

§ 38. Subject and Object 

In the conception of science the root-idea of to know must 
be sharply maintained. And the question arises: Who is 
the subject of this knowledge, and what is the object ? Each 
of us knows innumerable things which lie entirely outside 
of the realm of science. You know where you live and who 
your neighbors are. You know the names of your children 
and the persons in your employ. You know how much 
money you spend in a week. All this, however, as such, is 
no part of what science knows or teaches. Science is not 
the sum-total of what A knows, neither is it the aggregate 
of what A, B and C know. The subject of science cannot 
be this man or that, but must be vn^mkind at large, or, if 
you please, the human consciousness. And the content of 
knowledge already known by this human consciousness is 
so immeasurably great, that the most learned and the most 



64 § 38. SUBJECT AND OBJECT [Div. II 

richly endowed mind can never know but a very small part 
of it. Consequently you cannot attain unto a conception of 
"science" in the higher sense, until you take humanity as 
an organic whole. Science does not operate atomistically, 
as if the grand aggregate of individuals commissioned a few 
persons to satisfy this general thirst after knowledge, and as 
if these commissioners went to work after a mutually agreed- 
upon plan. No, science works organically, i.e. in the sense 
that the thirst for knowledge lies in human nature; that 
within certain bounds human nature can obtain knowledge ; 
that the impulse to devote oneself to this task, together with 
the gifts which enable one to work at it, become apparent 
of themselves ; and that in the realm of intellectual pursuits 
these coryphsei of our race, without perceiving it and almost 
unconsciously, go to work according to a plan by which hu- 
manity at large advances. 

Hence there is no working here of the will of an indi- 
vidual, and it is equally improbable that chance should 
produce such an organically inter-related result. A higher 
factor must here be at play, which, for all time and among 
all peoples, maintains the unity of our race in the interests of 
the life of our human consciousness ; which impels people to 
obtain knowledge; which endows us with the faculties to 
know; which superintends this entire work; and as far as 
the results of this labor lead to knowledge builds them up 
into one whole after a hidden plan. If impersonation were 
in order, this higher factor, this animating and illumining 
power, itself might be called "Science." Or if this is 
called poetry which properly belongs to pagan practice 
only, we may understand by "science" thus far acquired, 
that measure of light which has arisen in the darkness of 
the human consciousness by reason of the inworking of this 
higher power, — this light, of course, being interpreted not 
only as a result, but as possessed of the virtue of all light, 
viz. to rule and to ignite new light. With this interpreta- 
tion only everything accidental and individual falls away, 
and science as such obtains a necessary and universal char- 
acter. Taken in that sense, science makes the "mind of 



Chap. I] § 38. SUBJECT AND OBJECT Q5 

man " to have knowledge ; and every one receives a share of 
it according to the measure of his disposition and station in 
life. Moreover, it is only with this interpretation that 
science obtains its divine consecration, because that higher 
factor, which was seen to be the active agent in science, 
cannot be conceived otherwise than self-conscious ; for there 
can be no science for the human consciousness as such with- 
out a God to impel man to pursue science, to give it, and 
to maintain its organic relation. With the human individ- 
uals, therefore, you do not advance a step, and even if the 
Gemeingeist of our human nature should be personified it 
would not do, since this higher factor must be self-conscious^ 
and this Gemeingeist is brought to self-consciousness by sci- 
ence alone. This higher factor, who is to lead our human 
consciousness up to science^ must himself know what he will 
have us know. 

If the subject of science, i.e. the subject that wants to know 
and that acquires knowledge, lies in the consciousness of 
humanity, the object of science must be all existing things^ as 
far as they have discovered their existence to our human con- 
sciousness, and will hereafter discover it or leave it to be in- 
ferred. This unit divides itself at once into three parts, as 
not only what lies outside of the thinking subject, but also the 
subject itself, and the consciousness of this subject, become 
the object of scientific investigation. This object, as such, 
could never constitute the material of science for man, if it 
existed purely atomistically, or if it could only be atomis- 
tically known. It is known that Peruvian bark reacts 
against a feverish excitement in the blood, and it is also 
known that catarrh may occasion this feverish excitement. 
But as long as these particulars of cold, fever, and Peruvian 
bark lie atomistically side by side, I may knoiv them indeed, 
but I have no science yet of these data. For the idea of 
science implies, that from the manifold things I know a 
connected knowledge is born, which would not be possible if 
there were no relation among the several parts of the 
object. The necessity of organic inter-relations, which was 



66 § 38. SUBJECT AND OBJECT [Div. II 

found to be indispensable in the subject, repeats itself in 
the object. The apparently accidental discovery or inven- 
tion is as a rule much more important to atomistic knowl- 
edge than scientific investigation. But as long as something 
is merely discovered^ it is taken up into our knowledge but 
not into our science. Only when the inference and the sub- 
sequent insight that the parts of the object are organically 
related prove themselves correct, is that distinction born 
between the special and the general which learns to recognize 
in the general the uniting factor of the special. In this way 
we arrive at the knowledge that there is order in the object, 
and it is by this entering into this order and into this cos- 
mical character of the object that science celebrates her 
triumphs. 

This is the more necessaiy because the subject of science 
is not a given individual in a given period of time, but 
thinking man in the course of centuries. If this organic 
relation were wanting in the object, thinking man in one 
age and land would have an entirely different object before 
him than in a following century and in another country. 
The object would lack all constancy of character. It would 
not be the same object, even though in varying forms, but 
each time it would be another group of objects without 
connection with the formerly considered group. Former 
knowledge would stand in no relation to our own, and the 
conception of science as a connected and as an ever-self- 
developing phenomenon in our human life would fall away. 

If to make science possible, the organic connection is in- 
dispensable between the parts of the object, as far as they 
have been observed in different countries and at different 
times, the same applies to the several parts of the object 
when they are classified according to the difference of their 
content. If the observation of the starry heavens, of min- 
erals, of plants and animals, of man and everything that 
belongs in and to him, leads merely to the discovery of 
entirely different objects, which as in so many compartments 
are shut off from one another and stand outside of all rela- 
tion to each other, a series of sciences is possible, but no 



Chap. I] § 39. RELATION BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 67 

science, while the unity of these sciences could only lie in 
the observing subject or in the formal unity of the manner 
of observation. But our impulse after science aims higher. 
As long as there is a Chinese wall between one realm of the 
object and the other, that wall allows us no rest. We want 
it away, in order that we may know the natural boundaries 
across which to step from one realm into the other. Dar- 
winism owes its uncommon success more to this impulse of 
science than to the merits of its results. Hence our ideal of 
science will in the end prove an illusion, unless the object 
is grasped as existing organically. 

§ 39. Organic Relation between Subject and Object 

Even yet enough has not been said. It is not sufficient 
that the subject of science, i.e. the human consciousness, 
lives organically in thinking individuals, and that the 
object, about which thinking man wants to know every- 
thing he can, exists organically in its parts ; but there must 
also be an organic relation between this subject and this 
object. This follows already from what was said above, 
viz. that the subject itself, as well as the thinking of the 
subject, become objects of science. If there were no organic 
relation between everything that exists outside of us and 
ourselves, our consciousness included, the relation in the 
object would be wanting. But this organic relation be- 
tween our person and the object of science is much more 
necessary, in order to render the science of the object possible 
for us. 

We have purposely said that there must be an organic 
relation between the object and our person. The relation 
between the object and our thinking would not be sufficient, 
since the thinking cannot be taken apart from the thinking 
subject. Even when thinking itself is made the object of 
investigation, and generalization is made, it is separated 
from the individual subject, but it remains bound to the 
general subject of our human nature. Thus for all science 
a threefold organic relation between subject and object is 
necessary. There must be an organic relation between that 



68 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Div. II 

object and our nature^ between that object and our conscious- 
ness^ and between that object and our world of thought. 

The first also lies pregnantly expressed in viewing man 
as a microcosm. The human soul stands in organic relation 
to the human body, and that body stands in every way 
organically related to the several kingdoms of nature round 
about us. Chemically analyzed, the elements of our body 
appear to be the same as those of the world which surround 
us. Vegetable life finds its analogies in our body. And as 
concerns the body, we are not merely organically allied to 
the animal world, but an entire world of animalcula crowd in 
upon us in all sorts of ways and feed upon our bodies. The 
magnetic powers which are at work about us are likewise at 
work within us. Our lungs are organically adapted to our 
atmosphere, our ear to sound, and our eye to light. Indeed, 
wherever a thing presents itself to us as an object of science, 
even when for a moment we exclude the spiritual, it stands 
in organic relation to our body, and through our body to our 
soul. And as far as the spiritual objects are concerned, i.e. 
the religious, ethic, intellectual and aesthetic life, it would 
be utterly impossible for us to obtain any scientific knowl- 
edge of these, if all organic relation were wanting between 
these spheres of life and our own soul. The undeniable fact 
that a blind person can form no idea for himself of the visible 
beautiful, and the deaf no idea of music, does by no means 
militate against this position. Suppose that a Raphael had 
been afflicted in his youth with blindness, or a Bach with 
deafness, this would have made us poorer by so much as one 
coryphaeus among the artists of the pencil and one virtuoso 
among the artists of sound ; but the disposition of his genius 
to the world of the beautiful would have been no whit less 
either in Raphael or in Bach. The normal sense merely 
would have been wanting with them, to develop this dispo- 
sition of genius. For the organic relation in which our soul 
stands to these several spheres of spiritual life does not lie 
exclusively in the organ of sense, but in the organization 
of our spiritual ego. 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 69 

Meanwhile this organic relation between our nature and 
the object is not enough. If the object is to be the object 
of our science, there must in the second place be an organic 
relation between this object and our consciousness. Though 
the elements of all known stars may not have been determined 
adequately, the heavenly bodies constitute objects of science, 
as far at least as they radiate light, exhibit certain form, and 
are computable with reference to their distance and motion. 
Even if, at some later date, similar data are discovered in or 
upon stars which thus far have not been observed, as long as 
these observations have not been taken they do not count for 
our consciousness. However close the organic relation may 
be between ourselves and the animal world, the inner nature 
of animals remains a mystery to us, as long as the organic 
relation between their inner nature and our human conscious- 
ness remains a secret, and therefore cannot operate. We 
see a spider weave its web, and there is nothing in the 
spider or in the web that does not stand in numberless ways 
organically related to our own being, and yet our science 
cannot penetrate what goes on in the spider during the spin- 
ning of the web, simply because our consciousness lacks 
every organic relation to its inner nature. Even in the 
opinions which we form of our fellow-men, we face insolu- 
ble riddles, because we only penetrate those parts of their 
inner nature the analogies of which are present in our own 
consciousness, but we are not able to see through that par- 
ticular part of their nature which is solely their own and 
which therefore excludes every organic relation with our 
consciousness. By saying that our consciousness stands in 
the desired organic relation to the object of our science, we 
simply affirm that it is possible for man to have an apprehen- 
sion, a perception, and an impression of the existence and 
of the method of existence of the object. In itself it makes 
no difference whether this entering in of the object into our 
consciousness is the result of an action that goes out from 
the object, under which we remain passive, or of our active 
observation. Perception and observation are simply impos- 
sible when all organic relation is wanting between any 



70 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Diy. II 

object and our consciousness. As soon, however, as this 
organic relation is established, for external reasons the per- 
ception and the observation may be retarded or prevented, 
but the possibility is still present of having the object enter 
into our consciousness. 

This organic relation has mistakenly been sought in the so- 
called "faculty of feeling." But there is no room for this 
third faculty in coordination with the faculties of the under- 
standing and the will (facultas intelligendi and volendi). 
A capacity taken in the sense oi facultas is of its own nature 
always active, while in the case of the entering in of objects 
into our consciousness we may be passive. Oftentimes we 
fail entirely in withdrawing ourselves from what we do not 
want to hear or see or smell. This objection is not set 
aside by distinguishing perception and observation from 
each other as two heterogeneous facts. If I examine a thing 
purposely, or see it involuntarily, in each case the entirely 
self-same organic relation exists, with this difference 
only, that with intentional observation our intellect and 
our will cooperate in this relation. In which instance 
it is our ego which knows the possibility of the relation to 
the object; which desires this relation to exist in a given 
case ; and which realizes the relation by the exercise of the 
will. Hence there can be no question of an active faculty 
that shall operate independently of the intellect and the 
will. The fact is simply this. There are lines of com- 
munication that can bring the object outside of us in relation 
to our ego. And these lines of communication are of an 
organic nature, for the reason that with our physical growth 
they develop of themselves, and with a finer forming of our 
personality they assume of themselves a finer character. 
The nature of these organic relations depends of course 
entirely upon the nature of the object with which they are 
to bring us into communion. If this object belongs to the 
material world, these conductors must be partly material, 
such as, for instance, in sight the waves of light and our 
nerves. If the object, on the other hand, is entirely imma- 
terial, these relations must exhibit a directly spiritual nature. 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 71 

This is actually the case, since the perceptions of right and 
wrong, of true and false, etc., force themselves upon our ego 
immediately from out the spiritual world. In both cases, 
however, the relations that bring us in communion with the 
object must ever be sharply distinguished from that which, 
by means of these relations, takes place in our consciousness. 
By themselves these relations do not furnish the required 
organic relation. If I am in telegraphical communication 
with Bangkok, it does me no good so long as I do not under- 
stand the language in which the telegraph operator wires me. 
If I understand his language, I am equally in the dark as long 
as I do not understand the subject-matter of his message, of 
which I can form no idea because I am not acquainted with 
the circumstances or because similar affairs do not occur 
with us. In the same way the object must remain unknown 
to me, even though I am in contact with it by numberless 
relations, as long as in my consciousness the possibility is 
not given of apperceiving it in relation to my personal self. 
Of course we take the human consciousness here in its abso- 
lute sense, and do not detain ourselves to consider those 
lower grades of development which may stand in the way of 
assimilation of a very complicated object. We merely refer 
to those fundamental forms by which the consciousness 
operates. And it is self-evident that what is signalled 
along the several lines of communication to our conscious- 
ness, can only effect a result in our consciousness when this 
consciousness is fitted to take up into itself what was 
signalled. He who is born color-blind is not affected one 
way or another by the most beautiful exhibition of colors. 
In the same way it would do us no good to scan the purest 
tints with keenest eye, if, before this variety of color dis- 
covered itself to us, there were no ability in our conscious- 
ness to distinguish color from color. There is, therefore, 
no perception or observation possible, unless there is a re- 
ceptivity for the object in our human consciousness, which 
enables our consciousness to grasp it after its nature and 
form. Numberless combinations may later enrich this, but 
these combinations of themselves would be inconceivable, if 



72 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Div. II 

their component parts did not appear beforehand as funda- 
mental types in our consciousness. Neither can these fun- 
damental types be grasped in our consciousness unless this 
consciousness is fitted to them. The figure of the mirror 
should not mislead us. Every image can truly be reflected 
in it, even though the glass itself be entirely indifferent and 
neutral. But it does not reflect anything except in relation 
to our eye. In our consciousness, on the other hand, it does 
not only depend upon the reflecting glass, but also upon the 
seeing eye. In our consciousness the two coincide. And 
no single object can be grasped by our consciousness, unless 
the receptivity for this object is already present there. Per- 
ception and observation, therefore, can only be effected by this 
original relation between the object outside of us and the 
receptivity for this object, which prior to everything else is 
present in our consciousness because created in it. The 
microscopic nature of our consciousness asserts itself espe- 
cially in this. And it is only when this microscopic 
peculiarity in the receptivity of our consciousness lends its 
effect to the telegraphical relation to the object, that, in 
virtue of the union of these two factors, the required organic 
relation operates which brings the object in contact with 
our consciousness. 



By this, however, this object has not yet been introduced 
into the world of our thought^ and without further aid it 
would still lie outside of our "science." In the infinite 
divisibility of its parts the odor of incense finds its means 
to affect our olfactory nerves. By these nerves it is carried 
over into our consciousness, and there finds the capacity to 
distinguish this odor from the odor of roses, for instance, as 
well as the receptivity to enjoy this odor. But although in 
this way a full relation has been established between the 
incense as object and the consciousness in our subject, the 
scientific explanation of the odor of incense is still wanting. 
To the two above-named claims, therefore, we now add the 
third; viz. that the object must also enter into an organic 
relation to our world of thought. For it is plain that think- 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 73 

ing is but one of the forms through which our consciousness 
operates. When an infant is pricked by a pin, there is no 
single conception, in the consciousness of the child, either 
of a pin, of pricking, or of pain, and yet the pricking has 
been carried over to its consciousness, for the child cries. 
On the other hand, we see that, with an operation under 
chloroform, all relation between our consciousness and 
a member of our own body can be cut off, so that only 
later on, by external observation, we learn that a foot 
or an arm has been amputated. Which fact took place 
in our OAvn body entirely outside of the consciousness of 
our ego. And so there are a number of emotions, im- 
pressions, and perceptions which, entirely independently 
of our thinking and the world of our thought, come into 
or remain outside of our consciousness, simply in propor- 
tion as the receptivity of our ego corresponding therewith 
stands or does not stand in relation to the object. All 
the emotions of pain or pleasure, of feeling well or not 
well, of color and sound, of what is exalted or low, good or 
bad, pious or godless, beautiful or ugly, tasty or sickening, 
etc., arouse something in our consciousness and enter into 
relation with our ego through our consciousness, so that it 
is we who suffer pain or joy, are delighted or indignant, 
have taste for something or are disgusted with it; but how- 
ever strong these emotions of our consciousness may be, they 
as such have nothing to do with the thought-action of our 
consciousness. If we smell the odor of a rose, the remem- 
brance of the odor may recall in us the image of the rose, 
and this representation may quicken the action of thought; 
but this takes place entirely outside of the odor. For when 
some one makes us smell the odor of a plant entirely un- 
known to us, so that we can form no representation of it, 
nor do any thinking about it, the stimulus received by our 
consciousness is entirely similar, and as the odor is equally 
delicate and fragrant, our pleasure in it is equally great. The 
same phenomenon occurs when for the first time we taste 
fine wines whose vintage is unknown to us. The simple 
entrance, therefore, of something into our consciousness does 



74 § 39. ORGANIC EELATION [Dir. II 

by no means effect its adoption into our ivorld of thought. 
Wherefore this third relation of our ego to the object 
demands also a separate consideration. 

If the object that enters into relation with our con- 
sciousness consisted exclusively of those elements which 
are perceptible to the senses; if all relation were lacking 
between these elements; if no change took place in these 
elements themselves; and if there were but one organ of 
sense at our disposal, — our human consciousness would 
never have used and developed its power of thought. No 
capacity would have been exercised but sensation, i.e. per- 
ception, and, in consequence of this, imagination and repre- 
sentation. The object would have photographed itself on 
our consciousness ; this received image would have become 
a representation in us, and our imagination would have 
busied itself with these representations. But such is not the 
case, because we have received more than one organ of sense 
to bring us in contact with the selfsame object; because the 
objects are not constant but changeable ; because the several 
elements in the object are organically related to each other ; 
and because there are qualities belonging to the object which 
lie beyond the reach of the organs of sense, and therefore 
refuse all representation of themselves. In many ways the 
fact has forced itself upon us, that there is also what we call 
relation in the object. The object does not appear to be 
simple, but complex, and numberless relations apjDcar among 
its component parts. And these relations bear very dif- 
ferent characters corresponding to the difference of cate- 
gories; they lead to endless variations in each part of the 
object; they exhibit themselves now between part and part, 
and again among groups of parts ; they change according as 
they are perceived by different organs of sense, and then cause 
a new relation to assert itself among these several relations. 
These relations also present themselves between us and the 
object, partly as far as we as subject observe, and partly as 
far as we ourselves belong to the object to be observed; and 
they finally, with the constant change that presents itself, 
unite what was to what is, and what is to what is to come. 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 75 

In this way there is a whole world of relations; these rela- 
tions appear equally real and important as the parts of the 
object that enter into relation to each other. We frequently 
receive the impression that these relations dominate the 
component elements of the object more than those elements 
the relations; with the simplest antithesis of these two, as, 
for instance, with that of force and matter, the impression 
of the relation becomes so overwhelming, that one is fairly 
inclined to deny the reality of matter, and accept the rela- 
tion only as actually existing. Since by reason of its micro- 
cosmical character our human consciousness is also disposed 
to the observation of these relations, and since these relations 
cannot be photographed nor represented, but can only be 
thought^ apart from the elements among which they exist, 
from these infinite series of organically connected relations 
the whole world of our thinking is born. If science means 
that our human consciousness shall take up into itself what 
exists as an organic whole, it goes without saying that she 
makes no progress whatever by the simple presentation of the 
elements ; and that she can achieve her purpose only v/hen, 
in addition to a fairly complete presentation of the elements^ 
she also comes to a fairly complete study of their relations.^ 
That morphine quiets pain is a component part of our 
knowledge, in so far as it has been discovered that there is a 
certain relation between this poppy- juice and our nerves. 
But this empirical knowledge will have led to a scientific 
insight only when this relation itself shall be understood in 
its workings, and when it shall be demonstrable how mor- 
phine acts upon the nerves so as to neutralize the action of 

1 The distinction between elements (moments) and relations in the object 
has purposely been employed, because it is the most general one. By ele- 
ment we understand neither the substantia as substratum of the phenomena, 
nor the " Ding an sich " as object minus subject. Both of these are abstrac- 
tions of thought, and might therefore mislead us. It needs scarcely a re- 
minder, moreover, that there can be complication and association in these 
elements as well as in our presentations of them. And also that they can be 
reproduced from memory as well as be freshly perceived. But I cannot 
detain myself with all this now. My purpose was but to indicate the two 
distinctions in the object, one of which corresponds to our capacity to form 
representations, and the other to our capacity to think. 



76 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION' [Div. II 

a certain stimulus upon them. That these relations can be 
grasped by thought alone and not by presentation lies in 
their nature. If these relations were like our nerves, that 
ramify through our body, or like telephone lines, that stretch 
across our cities, they should themselves be elements and 
not relations. But this is not so. Nerves and lines of 
communications may be the vehicles for the working of the 
relations, but they are not the relations themselves. The rela- 
tions themselves are not only entirely immaterial, and there- 
fore formless, but they are also void of entity in themselves. 
For this reason they can be grasped by our thoughts alone, 
and all our thinking consists of the knowledge of these rela- 
tions. Whether we form a conception of a tree, lion, star, 
etc. , apart from every representation of them, this conception 
can never bring us anything but the knowledge of the 
relations in which such a tree, lion, or star stand to other 
objects, or the knowledge of the relations in which the com- 
ponent parts of such a tree, lion, or star stand to each other. 
To a certain extent it can be said, therefore, that the relations 
are phenomena as well as the elements which we perceive, 
and which either by our organs of sense or in some other 
way occasion a certain stimulus in our consciousness, and 
in this way place our consciousness in relation to these 
elements. Without other aids, therefore, science would 
enter into our consciousness in two ways only. First, as 
the science of the elements, and, secondly, as the science 
of the relations which appear between these elements. The 
astronomer would obtain science of the starry heavens by 
looking at the stars that reveal themselves to his eye, and 
the science of their mutual relations and of the relations 
between their parts by entering into those relations with his 
thoughts. But the activity of our consciousness with ref- 
erence to the relations is not confined to this. 



Our thinking does not confine itself exclusively to play- 
ing the part of the observer of relations, which is always 
more or less passive, but also carries in itself an active power. 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 77 

This active power roots in the fact, if we may put it so, that 
before we become aware of these relations outside of us, the 
setting for them is present in our own consciousness. This 
would not be so if these relations were accidental and if they 
were not organically related. But to be organically related 
is part of their very nature. It is for this reason that the 
object is no chaos, but cosmos ; that a universality prevails 
in the special; and that there appear in these relations an 
order and a regularity which warrant their continuity and 
constancy. There is system in these relations. These 
several relations also stand in relation to each other, and 
our affinity to the object proves itself by the fact that our 
capacity of thought is so constructed as to enable it to see 
through these last relations. If correctly understood, we 
may say that when human thought is completed it shall be 
like the completed organism of these relations. Our think- 
ing is entirely and exclusively disposed to these relations, 
and these relations are the objectification of our thinking. 
And this carries itself so unerringly that it is easily under- 
stood why some philosophers have denied the objectivity of 
these relations, and have viewed them as being merely the 
reproductions of our thinking. This question could not be 
settled, were it not for the fact that among the numerous 
relations there were also those of a regular and orderly 
transition of condition to condition. And since the result 
of these relations is also found in places where for ages nat- 
ure has not been seen by human eyes, such as on the tops 
of mountains reached for the first time, or in far out-of-the- 
way corners of the world, or in newly examined layers of 
the earth-crust, this subjectivism appears untenable. This 
identity of our thinking consciousness with the world of 
relations must be emphasized, however, in so far as these rela- 
tions have no existence except for an original Subject, who 
has thought them out, and is able to let this product of his 
thoughts govern the whole cosmos. Just because these 
relations have no substance of their own, they cannot work 
organically unless they are organicall)^ thought, i.e. from a 
first principle. When we study these relations, we merely 



78 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Div. II 

think the thought over again, by which the Subject defined 
these relations when he called them into being. If there 
were no thought embedded in the object, it could not be 
digestible to our thinking. As little as our ear is able to 
perceive color, is our thinking able to form for itself a 
conception of the object. And it is this very sense, in- 
separable from our consciousness, from which springs the 
invincible impulse, seen in all science, to understand the 
cosmos. Not in the sense that the cosmos exists only 
logically. This would amount to a cosmos that consists 
purely of relations. And since relations are unthinkable 
unless elements are given between which these relations form 
the connection, the inexorable claim lies in the relations 
themselves, and in our thinking as such, that there must also 
be elements that do not allow themselves to be converted 
into relations, and therefore lie outside of the field of our 
thinking. All we say is, that nothing exists without rela- 
tions; that these relations are never accidental, but always 
organic; and that the cosmos, as cosmos, in its collective 
elements exists logically, and in this logical existence is 
susceptible to being taken up into our world of thought. 
The result of all science, born from our observation and 
from our study of the relations of what has been observed, 
is always certain beforehand. He who aims at anything 
but the study of the organic world of thought that lies in 
the cosmos, until his own world of thought entirely cor- 
responds to it, is no man of science but a scientifical ad- 
venturer; a franc-tireur not incorporated in the hosts of 
thinkers. 

The fact that it is possible for us to study the world of 
thought lying objectively before us, proves that there is an 
immediate relation between our consciousness and objective 
thinking by which the cosmos is cosmos. If in our con- 
sciousness we had the receptivity only for empirical impres- 
sions of the visible and invisible world, we could not hope 
for a logical understanding of the cosmos, i.e. of the world 
as cosmos. This, however, is not so. Aside from the sus- 
ceptibility to impressions of all kinds, our consciousness is 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 79 

also able to think logically. This capacity cannot be imita- 
tive only. This would be conceivable if the whole organism 
of the relations of the cosmos were discovered to us. Then 
we should be able to acquire this as we acquire a foreign 
language, that reveals no single relation to our own tongue. 
As, for instance, when a Netherlander learns the language 
of the Zulus. But this is not the case. The relations 
lie hidden in the cosmos, and they cannot be known in 
their deeper connection, unless we approach this logically 
existing cosmos as logical thinkers. The science of the 
cosmos is only possible for us upon the supposition that 
in our thinking the logical germ of a world of thought is 
lodged, which, if properly developed, will cover entirely 
the logical world of thought lodged in the cosmos. And 
this provides the possibility of our thinking showing itself 
actively. As soon as we have learned to know the universal 
relations that govern the special, or have discovered in these 
several relations the germ of a self-developing thought, the 
identity between our subjective and the objective world of 
thought enables us to perform our active part, both by call- 
ing the desired relations into being, and by anticipating the 
relations which must reveal themselves, or shall afterward 
develop themselves. In this way only does human science 
attain unto that high, dominant and prophetical character 
by which it not only liberates itself from the cosmos, but 
also understands it, enables its devotees to take active part 
in it, and partially to foresee its future development. 



We have not been disappointed, therefore, in our supposi- 
tion, that what was meant by "science" is genetically re- 
lated to the etymological root meaning of the verb to knoiv. 
It was seen that in the object of science, distinction must be 
made between elements and their relations because of the 
organic existence of this object. Corresponding to this, it 
was seen that our human consciousness (i.e. the subject of 
science) has a double receptivity: on the one hand a power 
of perception for the elements in the object, and on the other 



80 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Div. II 

hand a power of perception for the relations in the object. 
By these two together the act of understanding (actio intel- 
ligendi, as the Romans used to call it) becomes complete. 
If the taking-up of the elements into our consciousness be 
called the perception (perceptio), and the taking-up of the 
relations into our consciousness the thinking (cogitatio), 
it is by these two that the object is reflected in our con- 
sciousness. What has been frequently placed alongside of 
the faculties of the understanding and of the will as the fac- 
ulty of feeling or the faculty of perception is only a subdivi- 
sion of the faculty of the understanding. To think (cogitare) 
and to understand (intelligere) are not the same. I can 
think something that does not exist, while the understand- 
ing takes place only with reference to an existing object, 
which as such never consists of pure relations, but always of 
elements as well among which these relations exist. And 
though it is a matter of regret that a mistaken parlance has 
more and more interpreted the intellect as the faculty of 
thought, and that intellectualism has come to be the accepted 
term by which to stigmatize gymnastical exercises of abstract 
thought, we should not abandon the chaste and rich expres- 
sion of facultas intelligendi, which must be interpreted as 
consisting of a double action : on the one side of the percep- 
tion^ and on the other side of the comprehension of what was 
perceived. This distinction in turn finds its ground in 
our dichotomic existence, we being partly somatical and 
partly psychical ; since the representation is more somatical 
and the conception more psychical. 

Of course it makes no difference whether the object to be 
investigated lies outside of me or in me. If I feel a pain in 
my head, my attention is directed to my head, while at the 
same time my thinking is stimulated to search out the cause 
of that pain and to discover the means by which to relieve 
it. In the same way it does not matter whether this per- 
ception comes to me through the senses or the nerves, from 
a tangible and visible object, or whether this perception is 
an immediate emotion that affects my spiritual being from 
the world of justice, the beautiful, good and true. Thought 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 81 

taken by itself can be made the object of investigation, in 
which case the element always lies in the subject that 
thinks, entirely independently of the fact whether this 
subject is any A or B, or the general subject man, angel, 
or God. But in whatever way they work, the purpose 
of both actions in my consciousness, that of perception 
and of thinking, is always to make me know something, or, 
after the original meaning of pthelv^ to make me see some- 
thing. The perception makes me know the element, the 
thinking makes me know the relations of this element. 
And by the united actions of these two I know what the 
object, and the manner of its existence, is. 

To prevent misunderstanding we should say, moreover, 
that this critical analj^sis, both of the elements and their rela- 
tions, and of the perception and the thinking, is only valid 
when the object in hand is absolutely elementary. As soon 
as we proceed from entirely elementary to complicated phe- 
nomena, the elements and relations are found constantly 
interwoven, in consequence of which the perception and the 
thinking work in unison. The difference between the ele- 
ment and the relation is clearly indicated by an atom and 
its motion. For though I think that I clearly perceive the 
motion of the atom, I see, in fact, nothing but the same 
atom, but constantly in a different relation. If, on the other 
hand, I examine a drop of water, I deal with a very compli- 
cated object, in which numberless elements and relations 
intermingle. The glitter, form and peripheral atoms can 
be perceived, but I cannot know that this morphological 
phenomenon is a drop of water until, not by my perception, 
but by my thinking (cogitatio), I obtain the knowledge of 
the relations. Through its perception a child notices some- 
thing glisten and a certain form, by which it knows that 
something is near, but it does not know that it is water. 
When it sees fire, it puts out its hands towards it. But 
when, by means of thinking, the knowledge of relations de- 
velops itself, the child knows by sight that the drop of water 
is wet and that fire burns. This complicated state of the 
phenomena gives rise to the morphological elements of a 



82 § 39. ORGANIC RELATION [Div. II 

tree, an animal, etc. And because they are complicated, 
their simple observation demands the combined activity of 
our perception and thought. One reason the more for 
including both under the faculty of the understanding. 

Undoubtedly a similar consciousness is active in the more 
highly organized animals. When a tiger sees fire in the 
distance, he knows that it hurts, though he may never have 
felt it. Hence he has not only the knowledge of certain ele- 
ments, but also a limited knowledge of their relations, and in 
a sense much more accurate and immediate than man's. But 
it will not do to transfer the idea of understanding to ani- 
mals on this ground. First, we do not know how this ele- 
mentary knowledge is effected in the animal. Secondly, this 
knowledge in the animal is susceptible of only a very limited 
development. And in the third place, in the animal it bears 
mostly an instinctive character, which suggests another man- 
ner of perception. A certain preformation of what operates 
in our human consciousness must be admitted in the animal. 
But if to a certain extent the activity in man and animal 
seems similar, no conclusion can be drawn from one activity 
to the other. We know absolutely nothing of the way in 
which animals perceive the forms and relations of phe- 
nomena. 

On the other hand, we are justified in concluding that in 
our human consciousness, since the conciousness of elements 
and relations in the object must be microscopically present, 
without this consciousness the emotions received could 
never produce what we know as smell, taste, enjoyment of 
color, sound, etc. It must be granted that these emotions 
in us could simply correspond to certain sensations which 
we call smell, taste, etc. ; but in the first place this corre- 
spondence would have to be constant, and thereby have a 
certain objectivity; and, again, this objective character is 
lifted above all doubt by what we call imagination and 
abstract thought. From these two activities of the human 
mind it appears that our human consciousness can be 
affected by the elements and can not only take up their re- 
lations in us, but from this taking-up into itself, which is 



Chap. I] BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT 83 

always passive in part, is also able to become active. As 
far as the perception is concerned, this action exerts itself 
in our imagination^ and as far as the thinking is concerned 
it exerts itself in our abstract thought. By the imagina- 
tion we create phenomena for our consciousness, and by 
our higher thinking we form relations. If these products 
of our imagination and of our higher thinking were without 
reality, we would have every reason to think that there is 
but one subjective process, which refuses to be more closely 
defined. But this is not so. The artist creates harmonies 
of tints, which presently are seen to be real in flowers that 
were unknown to him. And more striking than this, by 
our abstract thinking we constantly form conclusions, which 
presently are seen to agree entirely with actual relations. In 
this way object and subject stand over against each other as 
wholly allied, and the more deeply our human consciousness 
penetrates into the cosmos, the closer this alliance is seen to 
be, both as concerns the substance and morphology of the 
object, and the thoughts that lie expressed in the relations 
of the object. And since the object does not produce the 
subject, nor the subject the object, the power that binds the 
two organically together must of necessity be sought outside 
of each. And however much we may speculate and ponder, 
no explanation can ever suggest itself to our sense, of the 
all-sufficient ground for this admirable correspondence and 
affinity between object and subject, on which the possibility 
and development of science wholly rests, until at the hand 
of Holy Scripture we confess that the Author of the cosmos 
created man in the cosmos as microcosmos " after his image 
and likeness." 

Thus understood, science presents itself to us as a neces- 
sary and ever-continued impulse in the human fnind to reflect 
within itself the cosmos, plastically as to its elements, and to 
think it through logically as to its relations ; always with the 
understanding that the human mind is capable of this by reason 
of its organic affinity to its object. 



84 §40. LANGUAGE [Div. II 

§ 40. Language 

If a single man could perform this gigantic task in one 
moment of time, and if there were no difficulties to encounter, 
immediate and complete knowledge would be conceivable 
without memory and without spoken language. But since this 
intellectual task laps across the ages, is divided among many 
thousands of thinkers, and amid all sorts of difficulties can 
make but very slow progress — science is not conceivable with- 
out memory and language. With the flight of time neither 
science by representation nor science by conception can be 
retained with any permanency, unless we have some means 
by which to retain these representations and conceptions. 
Whether this retention is accomplished immediately by what 
we call memory, or mediately by signs, pictures, or writing, 
which recall to us at any moment like representations and 
conceptions, is immaterial as far as the result is concerned. 
In either case the action goes out from our human mind. The 
fact that representations and conceptions are recognized from 
the page shows that our mind has maintained its relation to 
them, although in a different way from common " remem- 
brance." If we had become estranged from them, we would 
not recognize what had been chronicled. Although then our 
mind is more active in what we call "memory," and more 
passive in the recognition of what has been recorded, it is in 
both cases the action of the same faculty of our mind which, 
either with or without the help of means, retains the represen- 
tation or conception and holds it permanently as accumulated 
capital. Observe, however, that in our present state at 
least, this stored treasure is sure to corrode when kept in 
the memory without aids for retention. This is shown 
by the fact that we find it easier to retain a representation 
than a conception ; and that our memory encounters the 
greatest difficulties in retaining names and signs, which 
give neither a complete representation nor a complete con- 
ception, but which in relation to each are always more or 
less arbitrarily chosen. Finally, as to the record of the 
contents of our consciousness outside of us, representations 



Chap. I] §40. LANGUAGE 85 

and conceptions follow each a way of their own. The 
representation expresses itself by art in the image, the con- 
ception by language in the word. This distinction main- 
tains its full force, even though by writing the word acquires 
in part the nature of the image, and by description the image 
acquires in part the nature of the word. The word is writ- 
ten in figures, even if these are but signs, and the figure can 
also be pictured by the poet in words. From this inter- 
minQclinof of the two domains it is seen once more how close 
the alliance is between representation and conception, in 
consequence of the oneness of the action by which the 
understanding (facultas intelligendi) directs itself in turn 
to the elements in the cosmos and to the relations between 
these elements. 

This, however, does not imply that language serves no 
higher purpose than to aid the memory in securing the capi- 
tal once acquired by our consciousness against the destructive 
inroads of time. Much higher stands the function of lan- 
guage to make the fund of our representations and concep- 
tions the common property of man, and thus to raise his 
individual condition to the common possession of the gen- 
eral consciousness of humanity. Without language the 
human race falls atomistically apart, and it is only by lan- 
guage that the organic communion, in which the members 
of the human race stand to each other, expresses itself. 
Language is here used in its most general sense. Though 
ordinarily we use the word language almost exclusively as 
expressing a conception conveyed by sound, we also use it 
to express communications conveyed by the eyes, by signs, 
by flowers, etc.; and even if we take language in the nar- 
rower sense, as consisting of words, the imitation of sounds 
and the several series of exclamatioDS plainly show that 
language is by no means confined to the world of concep- 
tions. The consciousness of one actually imparts to the con- 
sciousness of the other what it has observed and thought out ; 
of its representations therefore, as well as of its conceptions; 
and corresponding to this, language has the two fundamen- 
tal forms of image and word ; it being quite immaterial 



86 § 40. LANGUAGE [Div. II 

whether the image is a mere indication, a rough sign or a 
finely wrought form. A motion of the hand, a sign, a look 
of the eyes, a facial expression, are parts of human language 
as well as words. Nor should it be overlooked that, at least 
in our present state, language without words has a broad 
advantage over language in words. While language in 
words serves your purpose as far as the knowledge of your 
own language extends, the language of symbol is univer- 
sally intelligible, even to the deaf and dumb, with only the 
blind excepted. The old custom, which is reviving itself of 
late, of publishing books with pictures, is from this view- 
point entirely justified. Since our consciousness has a two- 
fold manner of existence, that of representation and of 
conception, the union of image and word will ever be the 
most perfect means of communication between the con- 
sciousness of one and of another. And communion can 
become so complete that a given content may be perfectly 
transmitted from the consciousness of one into that of 
another. The real difficulty arises only when instead of 
being borrowed from the morphological part of the cosmos, 
the content of your communication is taken from the 
amorphic or asomatic part of the cosmos ; such as when 
you try to convey to others your impressions and percep- 
tions of the world of the true, the good, and the beautiful. 
We have no proper means at command by which to reproduce 
the elements of this amorphic cosmos, so that by the aid of 
symbolism we must resort to analogies and other utterances 
of mind which are forever incomplete. This renders the 
relations among these elements continually uncertain, so 
that our conceptions of these relations are never entirely 
clear, while nevertheless a tendency arises to interpret this 
amorphic cosmos as consisting purely of conceptions. As 
this, however, will be considered more fully later on, it is 
sufiicient to state here that for all science, language in its 
widest sense is the indispensable means both of communica- 
tion between the consciousness of one and that of another, 
and for the generalization of the human consciousness in 
which all science roots. 



Chap. I] §40. LANGUAGE 87 

But language by itself would only accomplish this task 
within the bounds of a very limited circle and for a brief 
period of time, if it had not received the means of perpetu- 
ating itself in writing and in printing. Not the spoken but 
only the written and printed word surmounts the difficulty 
of distance between places and times. No doubt language 
possessed in tradition a means by which it could pass on 
from mouth to mouth, and from age to age ; especially 
in the fixed tradition of song ; but this was ever extremely 
defective. Carving or painting on stone, wood, or canvas 
was undoubtedly a more enduring form ; but the full, rich 
content of what the human consciousness had grasped, ex- 
perienced and thought out could only be made cecumenic 
and perpetual with any degree of accuracy and complete- 
ness, when wondrous writing provided the means by which 
to objectify the content of the consciousness outside of self 
and to fix it. This writing naturally began with the repre- 
sentation and only gradually learned to reproduce concep- 
tions by the indication of sounds. Thus image and word 
were ever more sharply distinguished, till at length with 
civilized nations the hieroglyphic language of images and 
the sound-indicating language of words have become two. 
And no finer and higher development than this is con- 
ceivable. The two actions of our consciousness, that of 
observing the elements and of thinking out their relations, 
which at first were commingled in their reproduction, are 
now clearly distinguished, and while art is bent upon an 
ever-completer reproduction of our representations, writing 
and printing offer us an entirely sufficient means for the 
reproduction of our conceptions. 

But even this does not exhibit the highest function of lan- 
guage for human life in general and for science in particu- 
lar. Language does not derive its highest significance from 
the fact that it enables us to retain and to collect the repre- 
sentations and conceptions of our consciousness; nor yet 
from the fact that in this way it serves as the means of com- 
munication between the consciousness of one and the con- 
sciousness of another ; but much more from the fact that 



88 § 40. LANGUAGE [Div. II 

language makes the content of our consciousness our property. 
It is one thing in the first stage of development to know 
that there are all sorts of sensations, perceptions, impressions, 
and distinctions in our consciousness, which we have neither 
assimilated nor classified. And it is quite another thing 
to have entered upon that second stage of our development, 
in which we have transposed this content of our conscious- 
ness into representations and conceptions. And it is by- 
language only that our consciousness effects this mighty 
transformation, by which the way is paved for the real progress 
of all science ; and this is done partly already by the lan- 
guage of images ; but more especially by the language of 
words ; and thus by the combined action of the imagination 
and thought. In this connection we also refer to the action 
of the imagination, for though ordinarily we attach a crea- 
tive meaning to the imagination, so that it imagines some- 
thing that does not exist, the figurative representation of 
something we have perceived belongs to this selfsame action 
of our mind. Representation surpasses the mere perception, 
in that it presents the image as a unit and in some external 
relation, and is in so far always in part a product also of our 
thought, but only in so far as our thought is susceptible of 
plastic objectification. Hence in the representation our ego 
sees a morphological something that belongs to the content 
of our consciousness. But whatever clearness may arise 
from this, and however necessary this representation may be 
for the clearness of our consciousness, the representation by 
itself is not sufficient for our ego; we must also logically 
understand the object ; and this is not conceivable without 
the forming of the conception. And this very forming of 
the conceptions, and the whole work which our mind then 
undertakes with these conceptions, would be absolutely 
inconceivable, if the language of words did not offer us the 
means to objectify for ourselves what is present in our 
consciousness as the result of thought. Being used to the 
manipulation of language, we may well be able to follow up 
a series of thoughts and partly arrange them in order, with- 
out whispering or writing a word, but this is merely the 



Chap. I] § 41. FALLACIOUS THEORIES 89 

outcome of mental power acquired by the use of language. 
When the content of our logical consciousness is objectified 
in language, this objectification reflects itself in our con- 
sciousness, which enables us to think without words ; but 
by itself we cannot do without the word. Since we are 
partly psychic and partly somatic, it is by virtue of our two- 
fold nature that psychic thought seeks a hody for itself in 
the word, and only in this finest commingling of our psychic 
and somatic being does our ego grasp with clearness the 
content of our logical consciousness. The development of 
thinking and speaking keeps equal pace with the growing 
child, and only a people with a richly developed language 
can produce deep thinkers. We readily grant that there are 
persons whose speech is both fluent and meaningless, and 
that on the other hand there are those who think deeply 
and find great difficulty in expressing themselves clearly ; 
but this phenomenon presents no objection to our assertion, 
since language is the product of the nation as a whole, and 
during the period of his educational development the in- 
dividual merely grows into the language and thereby into 
the world of thought peculiar to his people. No reckon- 
ings therefore can be made with what is peculiar to the feiv. 
The relation between language and thought bears a general 
character, and only after generalization can it be critically 
examined. 

§ 41. Fallacious Theories 

Suppose that no disturbance by sin had taken place in the 
subject or object, we should arrive by way of recapitulation 
at the following conclusion : The subject of science is the 
universal ego in the universal human consciousness ; the 
object is the cosmos. This subject and object each exists 
organically^ and an organic relation exists between the two. 
Because the ego exists dichotomically, i.e. psychically as well 
as somatically, our consciousness has two fundamental forms, 
which lead to representations and to conceptions; while in 
the object we find the corresponding distinction between ele- 
ments and relations. And it is in virtue of this correspond- 



90 § 41. FALLACIOUS THEORIES [Div. II 

ence that science leads to an understanding of the cosmos, 
both as to its elements and relations. The subject is able 
to assimilate the cosmos as object, because it bears in itself 
microcosmically both the types of these elements and the 
frame into which these relations naturally fit. And finally 
the possibility of obtaining not merely an aggregate but an 
organically connected knowledge of the cosmos, by which also 
to exercise authority over it, arises from the fact that there 
is a necessary order dominant in this cosmos, springing logi- 
cally from the same principle which also works ectypically 
in our own microcosmically disposed consciousness. 

Thus, taken apart from all disturbances by sin and curse, 
our human consciousness should, of necessity, have entered 
more and more deeply into the entire cosmos, by representa- 
tion as well as by conception-forming thought. The cosmos 
would have been before us as an open book. And foras- 
much as we ourselves are a part of that cosmos, we should 
have, with an ever-increasing clearness of consciousness, lived 
the life of that cosmos along with it, and by our life itself 
we should have ruled it. 

In this state of things, the universality and necessity^ 
which are the indispensable characteristics of our knowledge 
of the cosmos if it is to bear the scientific stamp, would 
not have clashed with our subjectivism. Though it is in- 
conceivable that in a sinless development of our race all 
individuals would have been uniform repetitions of the self- 
same model ; and though it must be maintained, that only 
in the multiform individualization of the members of our 
race lies the mark of its organic character ; yet in the ab- 
sence of a disturbance, this multiformity would have been as 
harmonious^ as now it works unharmoniously . With mutual 
supplementation there would have been no conflict. And 
there would have been no desire on the part of one indi- 
vidual subject to push other subjects aside, or to trans- 
form the object after itself. That this disturbance, alas, did 
occur, from which subjectivism sprang as a cancer to poison 
our science, comes under consideration later. Only let it here 
be observed how entirely natural it is for thinkers who deny 



Chap. I] §41. FALLACIOUS THEORIES 91 

the disturbance by sin, to represent science to this day as an 
absolute power, and are thereby forced either to limit science 
to the " sciences exactes," or to interpret it as a philosophic 
system, after whose standards reality must be distorted. 

The first tendency has prevailed in England, the second in 
Germany. The first tendency, no doubt, arose also in France, 
but the name of " sciences exactes^'' as appears from the added 
term exactes^ lays no claim to science as a whole. In England, 
however, science^ in its absolute sense, is more and more the 
exclusive name for the natural sciences ; while the honorary 
title of " scientific " is withheld from psychological inves- 
tigations. Herein lies an honest intention, which deserves 
appreciation. It implies the confession that only that 
which can be weighed and measured sufficiently escapes 
the hurtful influence of subjectivism to bear an absolute, i.e. 
an universal and necessary character; even in the sense that 
the bare data obtained by such investigations, by repeated 
experiments, are raised to infallibility, and as such are com- 
pulsory in their nature. And such — we by no means deny 
— all science ought to be. But however honestly this theory 
may be intentioned, it is nevertheless untenable. First in so 
far as even the most assiduous students of these sciences 
never confine themselves to mere weighing and measuring^ 
but, for the sake of communicating their thoughts and of 
exerting an influence upon reality and common opinion, 
formulate all manner of conclusions and hypothetical propo- 
sitions tainted by subjectivism, which are at heart a denial 
of their own theory. Only remember Darwinism ; the fun- 
damental opposition v/hich it meets with from men of repute 
shows that it has no compulsory character, and hence does 
not comply with the demands of the sciences. But also in 
the second place this theory is untenable, because it either 
ignores the spiritual, in order to maintain the ponderable,, 
world, and thus ends in pure materialism, or it ignores every^ 
organic relation between the ponderable and the spiritual 
world and thereby abandons the science of the cosmos as 
such. 

The second tendency stands much higher, and, by reason of 



92 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

the power of German thought, has ever led the van, and vigor- 
ously maintained the demand that science should lead to an 
organic knowledge of the entire cosmos, derived from one 
principle. Unfortunately, however, this theory, which with 
a sinless development would have been entirely correct, 
and is still correct in an ideal sense, no longer meets 
the actual state of things, partly because the investigating 
subjects stand inharmoniously opposed to one another, and 
partly because all sorts of anomalies have gained an entrance 
into the object. Only think of human language and of the 
conflict that has been waged about analogies and anomalies 
since the days of the Sophists and Alexandrians ! If, from 
this point of view, the disturbance of the harmony in the 
subject as well as in the object fails to be taken into ac- 
count, and the effort is persisted in logically to explain the 
discord from one principle, one ends in speculation which 
does not impart an understanding of the cosmos, but either 
imagines a cosmos which does not exist, or pantheistically 
destroys every boundary line, till finally the very difference 
between good and evil is made to disappear. 

Truly the entire interpretation of science, applied to the 
cosmos as it presents itself to us now, and is studied by the 
subject " man " as he now exists, is in an absolute sense gov- 
erned by the question whether or no a disturbance has been 
brought about by sin either in the object or in the subject of 
science. 

This all-determining point will therefore claim our atten- 
tion in a special section, after the character of the spiritual 
sciences shall have been separately examined. 

§ 42. The Spiritual Sciences 

If the cosmos, man included, consisted exclusively of pon- 
derable things, the study of the cosmos would be much 
simpler than it is now, but there would be no subject to 
appropriate this knowledge. Hence science has no right to 
complain, that the cosmos does not consist of mere matter. 
It is to this very fact that science owes its existence. Mean- 
while we cannot overestimate the difficult}^ of obtaining a 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 93 

science, worthy of the name, of the spiritual side of the 
cosmos. This difficulty is threefold. 

In the lirst place all the psychic, taken in the ordinary 
sense, is amorphic^ from which it follows that the morpho- 
logic capacity of our consciousness, by which we form an 
image of the object and place it before us, must here remain 
inactive. Thus while, in the tracing of relations in all that 
is ponderable, our understanding finds a point of support 
in the representation of the elements among which these 
relations exist, here this point of support is altogether want- 
ing. This does not imply that the object of these sciences 
is unreal; for even with the sciences of ponderable objects 
your understanding never penetrates to the essence. In 
your representation you see the form (^fiopcfyijy ; you follow 
the relations (Jtvacfyopai) with your thinking ; but the essence 
(^ov(Tia) lies beyond your reach. This does not imply that 
the spiritual objects may not have something similar among 
themselves, to what in the non-spiritual we understand by 
fMop(f)r) ; the forma in the world of thought rather suggests 
the contrary ; but in either case these forms are a secret to 
us, and our consciousness is not able to take them up and 
communicate them to our ego. And since as somatic-psychic 
beings we are naturally inclined to assimilate every object 
both plastically and logically, we certainly feel a want with 
respect to this in the spiritual domain. This want induces 
us all too easily to interpret this entire realm logically only, 
and so to promote a false intellectualism or a dangerous 
speculation. 

The second difficulty under which the spiritual sciences 
labor is the instability of their object. You can classify 
minerals, plants and animals, and though in these classi- 
fications you must ever be prepared for variations and 
anomalies, nevertheless certain fixed marks can be deter- 
mined to distinguish class from class. But with the 
spiritual sciences, which constantly bring you in touch 
with man, this rule evades you. Even the classification 
according to sex frequently suffers shipwreck upon effemi- 
nate men and mannish women. In " man " only does there 



94 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

assert itself to its fullest extent that individuality which 
principle resists every effort to generalize, and thus obstructs 
the way to the universal and necessary character of your 
science. You find a certain number of phenomena in 
common, but even these common properties are endlessly 
modified. And the worst is that in proportion as an indi- 
vidual is a richer object, and thus would offer the more 
abundant material for observation, the development of his 
individuality is the stronger, and by so much the less does 
such an individual lend himself to comparison. From a 
sharply defined character there are almost no conclusions 
to be drawn. 

And along with this amorphic and unstable characteristic a 
third difficulty is that in most of the spiritual sciences you are 
dependent upon the self-communication of your object. It 
is true, you can study man in his actions and habits. His 
face tells you something ; his eye still more. But if it is 
your desire to obtain a somewhat more accurate knowledge 
of the spiritual phenomena in him, in order to become ac- 
quainted with him, there must be in him : (1) a certain 
knowledge of himself, and (2) the power and will to reveal 
himself to you. If, then, as a result of all such self-communi- 
cation you desire to form some opinion on the spiritual phe- 
nomenon which you investigate, especially in connection 
with what has been said above, such self-communication 
must be made by a great number of persons and amid all 
sorts of circumstances. Moreover, many difficulties arise 
in connection with this self -communication of your object. 
(1) Most people lack sufficient self-knowledge. (2) So 
many people lack the ability to impart to you their self- 
knowledge. (3) Much is told as though it were the result 
of self-knowledge, which is in reality only the repetition 
of what others have said. (4) Many do not want to 
reveal themselves, or purposely make statements that mis- 
lead. (5) Self-knowledge is frequently connected with inti- 
mate considerations or facts which are not communicable. 
(6) With the same individual this self -communication will 
be wholly different at one time from another. And (7) a right 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 95 

understanding of what one tells you requires generally 
such a knowledge of his past, character, and manner of life 
as is only obtained from a very few persons. It is most 
natural, therefore, that in recent times the young child has 
been taken as the object of observation, for the reason that 
with the child these difficulties are materially lessened ; but 
this is balanced again by the fact that, because of its im- 
maturity, the child expresses so little. 

Thus we find that the difficulty in the way of the spiritual 
sciences does not lie in the mystery of the essence of their 
object. \Yith the exact sciences the essence is equally mys- 
terious. Neither does the difficulty of these sciences lie 
simply in the amorphic character of their object, or, if you 
please, in the lack of tangible elements. But the knowledge 
of the relations of the object of these sciences is so difficult 
to be obtained, because these relations are so uncertain in 
their manifestation and are therefore almost always bound to 
the self -communication of the object. It is noteworthy how 
slow the progress of these sciences is, especially when com- 
pared with the rapid progress of the exact sciences ; and the 
more so since the effort has been made to apply to them the 
method of the natural sciences. 

Symbolism, mythology, personification, and also poetry, 
music and almost all the fine arts render us invaluable ser- 
vice as interpretations of what is enacted within the spiritual 
realm, but by themselves they offer us no scientific knowl- 
edge. Symbolism is founded upon the analogy and the 
inner affinity, which exist between the visible and invisible 
creation. Hence, it is not only an imperfect help, of which 
we may avail ourselves since our forms of thought are bor- 
rowed from the visible, but it represents a reality which is 
confirmed in our own human personality by the inner and 
close union of our somatic-psychic existence. Without 
that analogy and that inner affinity there would be no 
unity of perception possible, nor unity of expression for 
our two-sided being as man. Your eye does not see ; your 
ego sees, but through your eye ; and this use of your eye 
could not effect the act of your seeing, if in the reflection 



96 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

of light in your eye there were no actual analogy to that 
which your ego does when you see something through 
your eye. And though this analogy may weaken when ap- 
plied to the other parts of the cosmos, in proportion as their 
affinity to man becomes more limited, we cannot escape 
from the impression that this analogy is everywhere present. 
With the aid of this symbolical tendency mythology seeks to 
represent the spiritual powers as expressions of mysterious 
persons. And though with us the life of the imagination is 
subjected too greatly to the verification of our thinking, for 
us to appreciate Such a representation, we constantly feel the 
need of finding in personification useful terms for our utter- 
ances and for the interpretation of our feelings. In fact, our 
entire language for the psychic world is founded upon this 
symbolism. Although in later days, without remembrance 
of this symbolism, many words have purposely been formed 
for psychical phenomena, the onomatopepoiemena excepted, all 
words used to express psychical perception or phenomena are 
originally derived by the way of symbolism from the visible 
world. And where poetry, music, or whatever art comes in to 
cause us to see or hear, not merely the beautiful in the form, 
but also the interpretation of the psychic, it is again on the 
ground of a similar analogy between the visible and invisible, 
that they cause us to hear something in verse or in musical 
rhythm, or to see something by means of the chisel or the 
pencil which affects our psychical life or teaches it to under- 
stand itself. Indeed, in the affinity between the visible 
and invisible part of the cosmos, and in the analogy founded 
on it, there lies an invaluable means of affecting the psychi- 
cal life and of bringing it to utterance ; but however richly 
and beautifully the world of sounds may be able to inter- 
pret and inspire our inner life, it offers no building material 
for scientific knowledge. Moreover, with all these expressions 
of art you must always reckon with the individuality of the 
artist who enchants your eye or ear, which sometimes expresses 
itself very strongly, so that with all the products of art, inde- 
pendent of sin and falsehood, which have invaded this realm 
also, the above-mentioned objection of individuality returns. 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 97 

If the empiricism of symbolism is of very limited service 
to us, the empiricism of the more general expressions of the 
psychic life is equally unhelpful. The method of tracing the 
expressions of the intellectual, ethic, social, juridic, sesthetic 
and religious life among the different nations through the 
course of time is justifiable, and it must be granted that the 
similarity and the similar process of these phenomena among 
different nations warrant certain conclusions concerning the 
character of these life-utterances ; but by itself this historic- 
comparative study offers no sufficiently scientific knowledge 
of the psychical life itself. Because you know that water 
descends upon the mountains mostly in the form of snow ; 
that there it forms glaciers ; that these glaciers melt ; and 
that first as foaming torrents, and then as a navigable 
stream, the water pushes forward to the ocean, your scien- 
tific knowledge of water is not yet complete. And really 
this historic-comparative study of the moral, social and re- 
ligious life of the nations teaches us not much more. Hence 
though we would not question for a single moment the rela- 
tive right and usefulness of these studies, we emphatically 
deny that these studies constitute the real prosecution of the 
spiritual sciences. You may excel in all these studies, and 
not know the least thing about your own soul, which subject- 
ively forms the centre of all psychic investigation. And 
what is more serious still, in this way you run a great risk 
of, unknown to yourself, falsifying the object of your sci- 
ence, if not of denaturalizing it. Apply, for instance, this 
method to the science of law, and you must form the conclu- 
sion that existing law only is law. Since this existing law 
constantly modifies itself according to the ideas of law 
that are commonly accepted, all antithesis between lawful 
and unlawful becomes at last a floating conception, and 
law degenerates into an official stipulation of the tempora- 
rily predominating ideas concerning mutual relationships. 
Thus you deprive law of its eternal principles ; you falsify 
the sense of law, which by nature still speaks in us ; and 
your so-called study of law degenerates into a study of 
certain phenomena, which you mark with the stamp of 



98 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

law. For though it is asserted that the idea of law de- 
velops itself with an inner impulse in the process of these 
phenomena; yet this may never be taken naturalistically, in 
the form of a physiological process; and you should know 
the idea of law, which is entirely different from these phe- 
nomena, before you will be able critically to analyze the 
phenomenon of law. And thus we see in fact the simplest 
principles of law pass more and more into discredit, and the 
rise of two factions which, each in turn, call lawful what 
the other condemns as unlawful. This antithesis is especially 
prominent in its application to the conceptions of personal 
property and capital punishment. One wants violated law to 
be revenged on the murderer, while to the other he is simply 
an object of pity, as a victim of atavism. Every existing law 
(jus constitutum) declares, that property must be protected 
by law, but the anarchist declares that in the ideal law 
(jus constituendum) all property must be avenged as theft. 
Though, therefore, without hesitation we concede that the 
dominion of symbolism points to a strong analogy between 
things " seen " and " unseen " ; and though we readily grant 
that the naturalistic method, by historic comparative study, 
is productive of rich results also for the spiritual sciences; we 
emphatically deny that the study of the spiritual sciences 
can be entirely bound to the method of the natural sciences. 
The cause of this difference is that the science of things 
" seen " is built up (1) from the sensuous perception or ob- 
servation of the elements by our senses, and (2) from the 
logical knowledge of the relations which exist among these 
elements by our thinking. This, however, is impossible 
with the spiritual sciences. In the object of this science 
the same distinction must be made between the real ele- 
ments and their relations. But, fitted to bring us in con- 
nection with the elements of the things " seen," our senses 
refuse to render this service with reference to the elements 
of the things "unseen." Moreover, it is self-evident that 
the logical knowledge of the relations, which by itself 
would be insufficient, becomes floating, while the elements 
among which they exist are not known. The plastic ca- 



Chap. I] §42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 99 

pacity of our mind, which, by means of the senses, is able 
to take up into itself the elements of the things " seen," 
remains here inactive, and the logical capacity is insuf- 
ficient by itself to form conceptions and judgments. If, 
nevertheless, the effort is made to treat these spiritual 
sciences after the method of things "seen," a double 
self-deception is committed : unknowingly one changes the 
object and unconsciously one chooses his point of support in 
something not included in this method. The object is 
changed when, as in Theology for instance, not God but 
religion is made the object of investigation, and religion only 
in its expressions. And something is chosen as point of de- 
parture which this method does not warrant, when the notion 
or the idea of religion is borrowed from one's own subject. 



The question therefore is, what renders the service in 
the spiritual sciences, which the representation-capacity 
in connection with the senses effects in things " seen." 
Since the object of the spiritual sciences is itself spiritual, 
and therefore amorphic, our senses not only, but the repre- 
sentation-capacity as well, render here no service. If no 
other means is substituted, the spiritual object remains be- 
yond the reach of our scientific research, and spiritual phe- 
nomena must either be interpreted materialistically as the 
product of material causes, or remain agnostically outside of 
our science, even as the present English use of the word science 
prescribes. This result, however, would directly conflict 
with what experience teaches. Again and again it appears 
that there are all sorts of spiritual things which we know 
with far greater certainty than the facts which are brought 
us by the observation of things " seen." The sense of right, 
the sense of love, the feeling of hatred, etc., appear again and 
again to have a much more real existence in our consciousness 
than many a member of our own body. And though the 
idealism of Fichte in its own one-sidedness may have outrun 
itself, you nevertheless cease to be man when the reality of 
spiritual things is not more certain to you than what by in- 



100 §42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

vestigation you know of plant and animal. If we maintain 
the etymological root-idea of science, in the sense that what 
is known forms its content, you maim your science when you 
deny it access to spiritual objects. 

There is no other course therefore than to construct the 
spiritual sciences from the subject itself; provided you do not 
overlook that the subject of science is not this inquirer or 
that, but the human consciousness in general. It was seen 
that with visible things all distinguishing knowledge would 
be inconceivable, if the archetypic receptivity for these 
objects were not present, microcosmically, in the human 
consciousness. And with reference to spiritual objects it 
may in a like sense be postulated, that the presence of such 
an archetypic receptivity for right, love, etc., is also found 
in our consciousness. Otherwise, these would simply have 
no existence for us. But with this receptivity by itself the 
task is not ended. An action must be exerted by the object 
of your science upon this receptivity. It is indifferent for the 
present whether this action comes to you mediately or im- 
mediately. We do not become aware of right, for instance, 
as a poetic product of our own spirit, but as a power which 
dominates us. We perceive the working of that power even 
when our feeling for right is not aroused, as in a concrete 
case by an occurrence outside of us. Entirely independently 
of the revelation, violation or application of right in given 
circumstances, we know that we must do right; and this 
sense cannot be in us, except that power of right, to which 
we feel ourselves subjected, moves and touches us in our 
inner being. This becomes possible since we possess the re- 
ceptivity for right, but is only established when right itself, 
as a power which dominates us, works upon that receptivity, 
and by it enters into our consciousness. The question lying 
back of this, whether right itself exists as universal, or is 
simply an expression for what exists in God, need not detain 
us. It is enough as long as we but know that in the 
taking-up of the object of the spiritual sciences as well as 
in the perception of the object of the natural sciences, we 
must distinguish in the object between the element and its 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 101 

relations, and in our consciousness between the correspond- 
ing perception of the element and examination of its rela- 
tions. Always with this difference in view, that in the 
world of matter the element works upon our consciousness 
through the senses, which provokes the action of the power 
of representation ; while with the spiritual sciences the 
element does not work upon the senses, neither through the 
representation, but in keeping with its spiritual nature 
affects our consciousness subjectively, and finds a recep- 
tivity in our subject which renders this emotion possible. 
And this emotion may be constant, and thus result in a 
permanent sense, or it may be accidental, in which case it 
falls under the conception of insinratioyi. In the trans- 
mission of the object of the spiritual sciences into our 
consciousness the same process takes place as in the dis- 
covery of our consciousness to the object of the natural 
sciences. In each case we take up into ourselves the element 
and the relations differently. In each case the receptivity 
must be present in us for the elements and for the relations. 
And in each case it is our thinking that makes us know the 
relations, while the perception of the element comes to us 
from the object itself. But these two sciences differ, in that 
the element of the visible world enters into our conscious- 
ness by a different way than the element of the spiritual 
world ; the elements of the visible world working upon our 
powers of representation through the senses, while in entire 
independence of our senses and of any middle link known to 
us, the elements of the spiritual world affect our subject 
spiritually, and thus to our apprehension appear to enter 
immediately into our consciousness. 

Thus the science of the spiritual object is derived from the 
subjectivity in man ; but always in such a way, that here also 
our individual subject may never be taken independently 
of its organic relation to the general subject of the human 
race. The individual investigator who seeks to construct 
the spiritual sciences exclusively from his own subjective 
perceptions, virtually destroys thereby the very conception 
of science, and he will have no place for Philology, History, 



102 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. II 

Political and Social sciences, etc. And though it might 
seem that this would destroy the subjective character of by 
far the greater part of the investigations within the domain 
of the spiritual sciences, it is not so. All study of law, for 
instance, would be inconceivable by a scholar who did not 
have the sense of right, however imperfectly, in himself. The 
study of language is only possible because we know the rela- 
tions between the soul, thought and sound, from our own 
subject. Statesmanship can only be studied, because by 
nature man is an active partner in all public affairs. The 
starting-point and the condition for the prosecution of these 
sciences consequently always lie in our own subjective sense. 
In the vestibule of Psychology the psychic phenomena of 
animal life receive ever greater attention, which study offers 
no mean contribution to the knowledge of simple percep- 
tions ; but the leading scientists unanimously protest against 
the conclusions drawn from this for the knowledge of the 
social life of animals, such as those for instance of Sir John 
Lubbock for the world of ants. If the possibility might be 
born at any time to determine by analogy that there are 
psychological and sociological relations in the world of ani- 
mals, it could not affect our position. Even then it would 
not be the world of animals that interprets to us the world of 
man, but on the contrary it would still be our own subject- 
ive sense, from which by analogy a world is concluded analo- 
gous to ours ; just as Theologians have set us the example 
with respect to the world of angels. 

Neither should we be misled by the fact that the objective 
character predominates in by far the larger part of the labor 
expended upon spiritual studies. If it is true that with 
Psychology for instance the physico-psychic experiment, and 
the comparative study of psychic expression and ethnological- 
historic investigations offer very considerable contributions to 
this department of science, it must not be forgotten that all 
these preliminary studies are impelled and directed by the 
psychic sense itself, and that after these preliminary studies 
the real construction of Psychology only commences. The 
more objective side of these studies has a twofold cause. 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIEITUAL SCIENCES 103 

First the relation wliicli exists in the entire domain of this 
study between our soul and our bod}^, and between the 
expression of our soul and the visible cosmos. And secondly 
the necessity of examining our own psychical life not by 
itself, but in organic relation to the psychical life of our 
human race. Here, however, appearance should not deceive 
us. Whatever we observe physically in this respect, or 
observe in cosmic expressions of the psychical life, does not 
really belong as such to the psychical sciences. And where 
out of our o^vn individual subject we try to find a bridge by 
which to reach the subjective life of humanity, that bridge 
is never anything but a bridge, and it is not the bridge, 
but the psychical world which we reach by it, that claims 
our attention. 

Distinction, therefore, must be made between pure and 
mixed spiritual sciences. Language, for instance, is a mixed 
spiritual science, because everything that pertains to the 
modulation of sounds, and the infl.uence exerted on them 
by the general build of the body, and especially by the 
organs of breathing, articulation, and of hearing, is somatic; 
and the real psychical study is only begun when in this 
body of language the logos as its psychic element is reached. 
Thus also in history the building of cities, the waging of 
war, etc., is the body of history, and its psycJiieal study 
only begins when we seek to reach the motives of human 
action which hide behind this somatic exterior, and to in- 
terpret the mysterious power which, partly by and partly 
without these motives, caused hundreds of persons, and 
whole nations, to run a course which, if marked by retro- 
gression, suggests, nevertheless, the unwinding of a ball 
of yarn. And whether you trace these motives, or whether 
you study the mysterious succession of generations, your 
own subjective-psychical life is ever shown to be your 
starting-point, and empiricism leaves you in the lurch. This 
is most forcibly illustrated by Philosophy in the narrower 
sense, which, just because it tries logically to interpret, if 
not the cosmos itself, at least the image received of it by 
us, ever bears a strongly subjective character, and with 



104 § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES [Div. n 

its coryphaei, least of all, is able to escape this individual 
stamp. The philosophical premises thus obtained by indi- 
vidual heroes among thinkers, according to the impulse 
of their own subjectivity, are then borrowed by the lesser 
gods (dii minores), in virtue of spiritual " elective affinity " 
(Wahlverwandtschaft), and equally in accordance with their 
subjective predilection. And these premises will dominate 
the entire study of spiritual sciences in given circles, as far 
as these, with the empiric data as building material, devote 
themselves architecturally to the erection of the building. 
Let no one, therefore, be blinded by the appearance of 
objectivity, brought about by the exhibition of these em- 
piric data. It is sheer self-deception to think that we 
can ever succeed in making the spiritual sciences fit the 
same last as the natural sciences. Even with the latter, 
simple empiricism can never suffice. Everything that is 
material and can consequently be counted, weighed and 
measured, no doubt offers us, at least as far as these rela- 
tions are concerned, a universally compulsory certainty, 
which, if observation be correct, bears an absolutely object- 
ive character. As soon, however, as you venture one step 
farther in this physical domain, and from these empiric 
data try to obtain a construction by which to discover 
among these scattered data a unity of thought, the process 
of an idea, or the progression from a first phenomenon to 
a result, you have at once crossed over from the physical 
into the psychical, the universally compulsory certainty 
leaves you, and you glide back into subjective knowledge, 
since you are already within the domain of the spiritual 
sciences. Thus to make it still appear that these philo- 
sophical interpretations and constructions, such as, for in- 
stance, the Descendenz-theorie, are merely logical deduc- 
tions from empiric data, is deception. And this deception 
continues itself within the domain of the spiritual sciences, 
since here, also, one thinks that he starts out from empiric 
data, when these empiric data at best can only serve as 
means to enrich your investigation and verify it, but are 
never able to reveal or to interpret to you the psychic self, 



Chap. I] § 42. THE SPIRITUAL SCIENCES 105 

which, after all, is the real object of these sciences. The 
result of this dangerous self-deception is, that in all these 
departments detail and preliminary studies greatly flourish, 
while for the greater part the real study of these sci- 
ences lies fallow. For instance, uncommon energ}" is spent 
in the study of the expressions and phenomena of religious 
life in different ages and among different peoples, by which 
to formulate them with utmost accuracy, while religion 
itself, which is the real object in hand, is neglected. In 
the same way the manifestations of the moral life of nations 
are studied in their several periods and localities, but cer- 
tainty about the power which determines the norm of moral 
life, and knowledge of the means of causing moral life to 
flourish, are more and more lost, — an atrophy, which ap- 
plies as well to the study of psychology, of history, of 
law, etc., and which can only be understood from a false 
desire to materialize the psychical, as if matter could be 
treated on an equal footing with the psychic. This desire, 
in itself, is readily understood, since an outwardly compul- 
sory certainty in this domain would be still more desirable 
to many people than in the domain of the natural sciences ; 
and it is even measurably just, since the empiric data, 
which with the spiritual sciences also are at our service, 
were formerly all too grossly neglected. But, as soon as 
it tries to exalt itself into a method, it meets an inex- 
orable obstacle in the nature and character of the psychic ; 
on the one hand, because the psychical image assumes no 
form for us except in its subjective individualization ; and, 
on the other hand, because the psychic can never be grasped 
in any other way than by our own psychic sense. 



CHAPTER II 

SCIENCE IMPAIEED BY SIN 

§ 43. Science and Sin 

The subjective character which is inseparable from all 
spiritual science, in itself would have nothing objectionable 
in it, if it had not been given a most dangerous exponent 
by sin. If there were no sin, nor any of its results, the 
subjectivity of A would merely be a variation of the sub- 
jectivity in B. In virtue of the organic affinity between 
the two, their subjectivity would not be mutually antago- 
nistic, and the sense of one would harmoniously support and 
confirm the sense of the other. In the days of the Reforma- 
tion, the impulse that impelled so many thousands to reform 
was preponderantly subjective. But the fact that in all 
these subjects a common conviction aimed at a common end, 
accounts for the irresistible force that was born from the 
cooperation of these many subjectivities. But, alas, such 
is not the case in the domain of science. It is all too often 
evident, that in this domain the natural harmony of subjec- 
tive expression is hopelessly broken ; and for the feeding of 
scepticism this want of harmony has no equal. By an 
investigation of self and of the cosmos you have obtained a 
well-founded scientific conviction, but when you state it, it 
meets with no response from those who, in their way, have 
investigated with equally painstaking efforts ; and not only 
is the unity of science broken, but you are shaken in the 
assurance of your conviction. For when you spoke your con- 
viction, you did not mean simply to give expression to the 
insight of your own ego^ but to the universal human insight; 
which, indeed, it ought to be, if it were wholly accurate. 

But of necessity we must accept this hard realitj^, and in 
every theory of knowledge which is not to deceive itself, 

106 



Chap. II] §43. SCIENCE AND SIN 107 

the fact of sin must henceforth claim a more serious con- 
sideration. Naturally the terrible phenomenon of sin in its 
entirety can have no place in these introductory sections. 
This belongs in Theology to the section on sin (locus 
de peccato). But it is in place here to state definitely 
that sin works its fatal effects also in the domain of our 
science, and is by no means restricted to what is thelematic 
(i.e. to the sphere of volition). What the Holy Scripture 
calls, in Eph. iv. 17, 18, the "vanity of the mind," the 
"having the understanding darkened, because of the igno- 
rance that is in them," even precedes the being "alienated 
from the life of God because of the hardening of their heart." 
Even without entering too deeply into the theological con- 
struction of this phenomenon, it may fearlessly be stated, 
(1) that falsehood in every sense and form is now in the 
world. And since more than one spiritual science hangs al- 
most exclusively upon personal communications, and since in 
consequence of "falsehood" all absolute warrant for the trust- 
worthiness of these data be wanting, it is sufficientlj^ evident 
how greatly the certainty of these sciences suffers loss in con- 
sequence of sin. This will be more fully shown in our study 
of the conception of "truth." For the present this single 
suggestion must suffice. (2) Alongside of this actual 
falsehood we have the unintentional mistake^ in observa- 
tion and in memory, as well as in the processes of thought. 
These mistakes may be reduced by manifold verifications 
to a minimum in the material sciences, but can never be 
absolutely avoided, while in the spiritual sciences they 
practise such usury that escape from their influence is 
impossible. (3) Self-delusion and self-deception are no less 
important factors in this process, which renders nothing so 
rare as a scientific self-knowledge, a knowledge of your own 
person and character in more than a hypothetical form. 
Since almost all deeper studies of the spiritual sciences start 
out from the subjective image which we reflect of ourselves 
in our own consciousness, it needs no further proof how 
injuriously with the students of these sciences this self- 
delusion and self-deception must affect their studies and 



108 § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN [Div. II 

the final results. (4) A fourth evil resides in our 
imagination. In a normal condition the self-consciousness 
would be able at once accurately to indicate the boundary 
line between what enters into our consciousness from the 
real world without, and what is wrought in our conscious- 
ness by our imagination. But this boundary line is not 
only uncertain because of sin, but in strongly impassioned 
natures it is sometimes absolutely undiscoverable, so that 
phantasy and reality frequently pass into one another. The 
difficulty does not consist merely in the uncertainty or in 
the destruction of this boundary line ; the imagination itself 
is in an abnormal condition. In one it works too weakly, 
in another it is over-excited. When it is over-excited, it 
retains its imperfect images, subjects our minds to the 
dominion of these images, falsifies thereby our self-con- 
sciousness, so that the deliverance of our inner selves is 
lost in this imagery. This imaginary world will then assert 
its dominion over us, and weaken the susceptibility in us 
for knowledge of ourselves and of the cosmos. (5) Equally 
injurious are the influences which this abnormal element 
in the condition of other minds exerts upon us, since this 
evil, which by itself is already enough of a hindrance, is 
thereby given a coefficient. Not only are we subject to 
these influences from infancy, but our education frequently 
tends intentionally to give them domination over us. Lan- 
guage also adds its contribution. All kinds of untruths have 
entered into our every-day speech, and the names and words 
we use unconsciously mould our self-consciousness. The 
proverbs and common sayings (Schlagworter) which from 
our youth up we have adopted as a sort of axioms affect us no 
less strongly. " Truth defends itself " is what the ancients 
said, and theologians of the ethical color take up the refrain, 
but do not perceive that by this very thing our outlook upon 
history is blurred and our sense of dut}^ weakened. Even 
in theological interests such an adage is bound to effect its 
fallacious influence, in causing the transcendence of God to 
be lost to our sense in a mere pantheistic consideration. 
Add to this the several ideas and current expressions 



Chap. II] § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN 109 

approved by the spirit of the times and inculcated in us, in 
the face of the fact that they are fallacious, and it becomes 
clear that our mind, which of itself lies ensnared in all 
manner of deceptions, is threatened to be entirely misled. 
(6) The effects worked by sin through the body claim here 
an equal consideration. In consequence of sin there is 
really no one in a normal bodily condition. All sorts of 
wrong and sickly commotions bestir themselves in our body 
and work their effect in our spiritual dispositions. They 
make one to tend strongly to the material, and another too 
strongly to the acosmic. They will make A a pessimist, 
and B a light-hearted optimist. They also modify the judg- 
ment upon history, for instance, according to the influences 
which we see at work upon persons. (7) Stronger still, 
perhaps, is the influence of the sin-disorganized relation- 
ships of life^ — an influence which makes itself especially felt 
with the pedagogic and the social sciences. He who has had 
his bringing-up in the midst of want and neglect will enter- 
tain entirely different views of jural relationships and social 
regulations from him who from his youth has been bathed 
in prosperity. Thus, also, your view of civil right would 
be altogether different, if you had grown up under a des- 
potism, than if you had spent the years of early man- 
hood under the excesses of anarchism. To which (8) this 
is yet to be added, that the different parts of the content 
of our consciousness affect each other, and no one exists 
atomistically in his consciousness. This entails the result 
that the inaccuracies and false representations which you 
have gleaned from one realm of life, affect injuriously again 
the similarly mixed ideas which you have made your own 
from another domain. And so this evil indefinitely multi- 
plies. Especially the leading thought which we have formed 
in that realm of life that holds our chiefest interests, exer- 
cises a mighty dominion upon the whole content of our 
consciousness, viz. our religious or political views, — what 
used to be called one's life- and world- view, by which the 
fundamental lines lie marked out in our consciousness. If, 
then, we make a mistake, or a single inaccurate move, how 



110 § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN [Div. II 

can it fail but communicate itself disastrously to our entire 
scientific study? 

All this refers merely to the formal working of sin upon our 
mind. But this is not all. Sin also works upon our conscious- 
ness through an endless variety of moral motives. "Every- 
body preaches for his own parish" (chacun preche pour sa 
paroisse) is the simple expression of the undeniable truth 
that our outlook upon things is also governed by numerous 
personal interests. An Englishman will look upon the his- 
tory of the Dutch naval battles with the British fleet very 
differently from a Netherlandish historian ; not because each 
purposely desires to falsify the truth, but because both are 
unconsciously governed by national interests. A merchant 
will naturally hold different views concerning free trade, fair 
trade and protection, from the manufacturer, simply because 
self-interests and trade-interests unconsciously affect his 
views. A Roman Catholic has an entirely different idea of 
the history of the Reformation from a Protestant's, not because 
he purposely violates the truth, but simply because without 
his knowing it his church interests lead him away from the 
right path. Thus our physicians will readily be inclined to 
think differently from the patients about the free practice of 
medicine ; the jurist will judge the jury differently from the 
free citizen ; a man of noble birth will maintain a different 
attitude toward democratic movements from that of a man 
of the people. These are. all moral differences, which are 
governed by self-interests, and which sometimes work con- 
sciously and lead to the violation of conscience, but which 
generally govern the result of our studies unconsciously and 
unknown to us. 

No word has yet been said of that third class of influences 
which are essentially sinful because they result from the 
injurious effect worked by sin immediately upon our nature. 
The Christian Church confesses this to be the darkening of 
the understanding ; which does not mean that we have lost 
the capacity of thinking logically, for as far as the impulse 
of its law of life is concerned, the logica has not been 
impaired by sin. When this takes place, a condition of 



Chap. II] § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN 111 

insanity ensues. It must be granted that sin has weakened 
the energy of thought, so that in all the fulness of its glories 
this wondrous gift manifests itself only now and then in 
a rare athlete; and it must be acknowledged that sin all 
too often makes us the victims of a false and an apparently 
logical, but in reality very unlogical, reasoning; but man 
as man, or, if you please, the universal human conscious- 
ness, is always able to overcome this sluggishness and to 
correct these mistakes in reasoning. No, the darkening of 
the understanding consists in something else, and would be 
better understood if we called it the darkening of our con- 
sciousness. Over against sin stands love, the sympath}^ of 
existence, and even in our present sinful conditions the 
fact is noteworthy, that where this sympathy is active you 
understand much better and more accurately than where 
this sympathy is wanting. A friend of children under- 
stands the child and the child life. A lover of animals 
understands the life of the animal. In order to study 
nature in its material operations, you must love her. With- 
out this inclination and this desire toward the object of your 
study, you do not advance an inch. Hence there is nothing 
problematic in the fact that the Holy Scripture presents man 
in his original state before he fell as having both by sympathy 
and affinity a knowledge of nature, which is entirely lost by 
us. And this is significant in every department of study. Sin 
is the opposite of love. It has robbed us, speaking generall}^, 
of all seeking sympathy, only to leave us this seeking love 
within some single domain, and that in a very defective 
form. But, taken as a whole, standing over against the 
cosmos as its object, our mind feels itself isolated; the object 
lies outside of it, and the bond of love is wanting by which 
to enter into and learn to understand it. This fatal effect 
of sin must naturally find its deeper reason in the fact that 
the life harmony between us and the object has been dis- 
turbed. What once existed organically, exists now conse- 
quently as foreign to each other, and this estrangement from 
the object of our knowledge is the greatest obstacle in the 
way to our knowledge of it. 



112 § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN [Div. II 

But there is more. The disorganization which is the 
result of sin consists not merely in the break in the natural 
life-harmony between us and the cosmos, but also in a 
break in the life-harmony in our oivn selves. More than one 
string has been strung upon the instrument of our heart, 
and each string has more than one tone. And its condition 
is normal only when the different motives and tones of 
our heart harmoniously affect one another. But such is no 
longer the case. Disharmony rules in our innermost parts. 
The different senses, in the utterances of our inner selves, 
affect each other no longer in pure accord, but continually 
block the way before each other. Thus discord arises in our 
innermost selves. Everything has become disconnected. 
And since the one no longer supports the other, but 
antagonizes it, both the whole and its parts have lost their 
purity. Our sense of the good, the true, the beautiful, of 
what is right, of what is holy, has ceased to operate with ac- 
curacy. In themselves these senses are weakened, and in 
their effect upon each other they have become mixed. And 
since it is impossible, in the spiritual sciences, to take one 
forward step unless these senses serve us as guides, it readily 
appears how greatly science is obstructed by sin. 

And finally, the chiefest harm is the ruin, worked by sin, 
in those data, which were at our command, for obtaining 
the knowledge of God, and thus for forming the conception 
of the whole. Without the sense of God in the heart no 
one shall ever attain unto a knowledge of God, and with- 
out love, or, if you please, a holy sympathy for God, that 
knowledge shall never be rich in content. Every effort to 
prove the existence of God by so-called evidences must 
fail and has failed. By this we do not mean that the 
knowledge of God must be mystic; for as soon as this knowl- 
edge of God is to be scientifically unfolded, it must be repro- 
duced from our thinking consciousness. But as our science in 
no single instance can take one forward step, except a bridge 
is built between the subject and the object, it cannot do so 
here. If thus in our sense of self there is no sense of the 
existence of God, and if in our spiritual existence there is 



Chap. II] § 43. SCIENCE AND SIN 113 

no bond which draws us to God, and causes us in love to go 
out unto him, all science is here impossible. If, now, experi- 
ence shows that this sense has not worn away entirely^ and that 
this impulse has not ceased altogether^ but that, in virtue of 
its own motive, sin has weakened this sense to such an extent 
as to render it oftentimes unrecognizable, and has so falsi- 
fied this impulse, that all kinds of religious emotions go 
hand in hand with hatred of God, it is plain that every 
scientific reproduction of the knowledge of God must fail, 
as long as this sense remains weakened and this impulse 
falsified in its direction. From which it follows at the same 
time that the knowledge of the cosmos as a whole, or, if you 
please, philosophy in a restricted sense, is equally bound to 
founder upon this obstruction wrought by sin. Suppose that 
you had succeeded in attaining an adequate knowledge of all 
the parts of the cosmos, the product of these results would 
not yet give you the adequate knowledge of the whole. 
The whole is always something different from the combina- 
tion of its parts. First because of the organic relation which 
holds the parts together ; but much more because of the 
entirely new questions which the combination of the whole 
presents : questions as to the origin and end of the whole ; 
questions as to the categories which govern the object in 
its reflection in your consciousness ; questions as to absolute 
being, and as to what n(?7i-cosmos is. In order to answer 
these questions, you must subject the whole cosmos to your- 
self, your own self included; in order to do this in your 
consciousness you must step out from the cosmos, and you 
must have a starting-point (So? /xot irov o-Toi) in the non- 
cosmos; and this is altogether impossible as long as sin 
confines you with your consciousness to the cosmos. 

From which it by no means follows, that you should 
sceptically doubt all science, but simply that it will not do 
to omit the fact of sin from your theory of knowledge. 
This would not be warranted if sin were only a thelematic 
conception and therefore purely ethic ; how much less, now, 
since immediately as well as mediately, sin modifies so 
largely all those data with which you have to deal in the 



114 § 44. TRUTH [Div. II 

intellectual domain and in the building-up of your science. 
Ignorance wrought by sin is the most difficult obstacle in 
the way of all true science. 

§ 44. Truth 

In a preceding section reference has already been made to 
the grave significance to scientific investigation of the con- 
ception which one forms of "truth." This significance can 
now be considered more closely in relation to the fact of sin. 
It will not do to say that seeking after truth is directed ex- 
clusively against the possibility of mistake. He who in good 
faith has made a mistake, has been inaccurate but not untrue. 
Falsehood is merely a milder expression for the lie, and the 
search after truth has no other end in view than escape from 
the fatal power of what Christ called the lie (to i/reOSo?). 
This does not imply that " the mistake " does not stand 
equally related to sin. The former section tried to prove the 
contrary. But if the unconscious mistake stands in causal 
relation to sin, this relation is entirely different from what it 
is with the lie. The Holy Scripture teaches us to recognize 
an unholy principle in the lie, from which a caricature 
(Zerrbild) of all things is born, and the fatherhood of this 
lie is pointed out to us in Satan. In John viii. 44, we 
read : "The devil speaketh a lie — for he is a liar and the 
father thereof." This theological explanation need not detain 
us now, but it cannot be denied that a false representation 
of the real has made its way into almost every department 
of life ; that with a closer investigation these several false 
representations appear to stand in an organic relation ; and 
that a hidden impelling power is at work within this entire 
domain of the false and the untrue, which arouses our right- 
eous indignation and bears a sinful character for our conscious- 
ness. The form of this spuriousness is not constant. It often 
happens that certain general ideas govern public opinion for 
a long time and then become discredited ; that they maintain 
themselves a little longer with the less educated masses ; 
and finally pass away altogether, so that he who still holds 
them is out of date. But with this shedding of its skin the 



Chap. II] § 44. TRUTH 115 

serpent does not die. And Proteus-like, the false and untrue 
reappear in a new form, and the battle of life and death 
between truth and falsehood begins anew. Obviously, there- 
fore, the lie is no mistake, nor a temporary dominatiug 
untruth, but a power, which affects injuriously the conscious- 
ness of man, and not merely puts into his hands phantasy 
for reality, and fiction for history, but intentionally brings 
into our mind a representation of existing things which 
proscribes reality, with the avowed aim of estranging us 
from it. 

In this condition of affairs a holy interest is at stake in 
this struggle for the truth. This conflict does not aim at 
the correction of simple mistakes in the representation, 
neither does it combat prejudice, nor rectify inaccuracies ; 
but it arrays itself against a power, which ever in a new form 
entangles our human consciousness in that which is false, 
makes us servants to falsehood, and blinds us to realit3^ 
Thus the saying of Christ, " I am the truth," has a deep 
significance ; since he alone possessed such spiritual power 
of resistance that he was able to withdraw himself abso- 
lutely from the dominion of the false. The word " lie " it- 
self confirms this interpretation. In our daily life this evil 
word is almost never used in circles where the lie is contra- 
band ; while on the other hand, in circles which, alas, admit 
the lie as a common weapon of defence, the contention for 
true or untrue is constantly in order with the reproachful 
epithet of "you lie." If you think of life in heaven, you 
perceive at once that every effort to establish truth falls 
away. Who would enter the arena in behalf of truth, in a 
place where the lie is not conceivable ? Neither can truth have 
had a place among the conceptions which were originally 
common to man in the state of his innocence. As long as 
sin had not entered the heart, there could be no impulse 
to defend truth against the lie which had as yet no exist- 
ence. In entire accordance with this the Scriptural narra- 
tive of the fall presents Satan as the first to whisper the lie, 
that what God had said was not true, and that moment 
marks the beginning of the conflict for the truth. 



116 § 44. TRUTH [Div. II 

Hence it is none too strongly said, that the struggle for 
"truth" is legitimately only a result of sin. Science is 
entirely different from truth. If you imagine our human 
development without sin, the impulse to know and understand 
the cosmos, and by this knowledge to govern it, would have 
been the same ; but there would have been no search after 
truths simply because there could have been no danger of re- 
lying upon falsehood as a result of investigation. In our 
sinful condition, however, while the human consciousness is 
constantly ensnared in falsehood, from the very nature of 
the case science has the twofold calling, not only to investi- 
gate and understand the object, but also to banish the false 
representations of it. 

But this is easier said than done, and as soon as you leave 
the material domain you see different men, who from their 
point of view are honest in their purposes, and whose talents 
for investigation are fairly equal, arrive at as many different 
and sometimes directly opposite results. This is less to be 
feared in the domain of pure matter, at least as long as one 
confines himself to the mere statement of what has been ob- 
served, and draws no inferences from his observations. As 
soon, however, as investigations reach the point where the 
reinforced eye and ear are no longer able to observe with abso- 
lute certainty, disputes may arise, though this has nothing 
to do with falsehood ; and when, after all the applause that 
hailed Dr. Koch's preparation for tuberculosis, it was shown 
that this preparation not only failed of its purpose, but even 
caused injurious effects, he had to acknowledge it. When 
facts spoke, illusion was ended. It is entirely different, how- 
ever, when one comes in contact with the ?^09^-material domain 
of life. The science of statistics, on which it was thought we 
could so safely build, is shown to be largely untrustworthy. 
And when we enter the domain of the real spiritual sciences, 
the most objective observation, such as the examination of 
documents, and the statement of a few tangible facts, are 
scarcely ended, but ideas everywhere separate, and there is no 
more objective certainty to compel universal homage, which 
can bring about a unity of settled result. This is not found 



Chap. II] § 44. TRUTH 117 

in the domain of psychology ; or of philosophy in the narrower 
sense ; or of history ; or of law ; or in any spiritual domain 
whatever. Because here the subjective factor becomes pre- 
ponderant ; and this subjective factor is dependent upon the 
antithesis between falsehood and truth ; so that both the 
insight into the facts and the structure Avhich one builds 
upon this insight must differ, and at length become, first 
contrary and then contradictory. 

The fatality of the antithesis between falsehood and truth 
consists in this, that every man from his point of view claims 
the truth for himself, and applies the epithet of "untrue" to 
everything that opposes this. Satan began by making God 
the liar and by presenting himself as the speaker of truth. 
And for our demonstration this applies more emphatically 
still to the custom among men ; especially since in this section 
we speak exclusively of those persons who devote themselves 
to scientific research. Though we grant that in science also 
wilful mutilation of facts is not altogether wanting, it must be 
accepted, as a rule, that he who announces himself as a man 
of science is disposed to take things as they are, and to deal 
with them accordingly. Nobody writes a scientific thesis 
with the purpose of propagating falsehood; the purpose of 
all scientific labor is to champion the truth. And from this 
very fact it follows that where two scientific men arrive at 
directly opposite results, each will see the truth in his own 
result, and falsehood in the result of his opponent, and both 
will deem it their duty to fight in the defence of what 
seems to them the truth, and to struggle against what seems 
to them the lie. If this concerns a mere point of detail, it 
has no further results; but if this antithesis assumes a more 
universal and radical character, school will form itself against 
school, system against system, world-view against world- 
view, and two entirely different and mutually exclusive 
representations of the' object, each in organic relation, will 
come at length to dominate whole series of subjects. From 
both sides it is said: "Truth is with us, and falsehood with 
you." And the notion that science can settle this dispute is 
of course entirely vain, for we speak of two all-embracing 



118 § 44. TRUTH [Div. n 

representations of the object, both of which have been ob- 
tained as the result of very serious scientific study. 

If the objection be raised that science has cleared away 
whole series of fallacious representations, we repeat that 
this concerned the forms only in which the lie for a time 
lay concealed, but that that same lie, and therefore the same 
antithesis against truth, is bound to raise its head in new 
forms with indestructible power. All sorts of views, which 
for centuries have been considered dead, are seen to rise 
again resuscitated in our age. As far as principle is con- 
cerned and the hidden impulse of these antitheses, there is 
nothing new under the sun ; and he who knows history and 
men, sees the representatives of long-antiquated world-views 
walk our streets to-day, and hears them lecture from the 
platform. The older and newer philosophers, the older and 
newer heresies, are as like each other, if you will pardon the 
homely allusion, as two drops of water. To believe that an 
absolute science in the above-given sense can ever decide 
the question between truth and falsehood is nothing but a 
criminal self-deception. He who affirms this, always takes 
science as it proceeds from his own subjective premises and 
as it appears to him, and therefore eo ipso stigmatizes every 
scientific development which goes out from other premises 
as pseudo-science, serviceable to the lie. The antithesis of 
principles among Theism, Pantheism, and Atheism domi- 
nates all the spiritual sciences in their higher parts, and as 
soon as the students of these sciences come to defend what 
is true and combat what is false, their struggle and its 
result are entirely governed by their subjective starting- 
point. 

In connection with the fact of sin, from which the whole 
antithesis between truth and falsehood is born, this phenome- 
non presents itself in such a form that one recognizes the 
fact of sin, and that the other denies it or does not reckon 
with it. Thus what is normal to one is absolutely abnormal 
to the other. This establishes for each an entirely different 
standard. And where both go to w^ork from such subjective 
standards, the science of each must become entirely different. 



Chap. II] § 45. WISDOM 119 

and the unity of science is gone. The one cannot be forced 
to accept what the other holds as truth, and what according 
to his view he has found to be truth. 

Thus, taken by itself, the triumph of Scepticism ought to 
result from this, and Pilate's exclamation, ''What is truth," 
should be the motto of highest wisdom. But the process of 
history is a protest against this. However often Scepticism 
has lifted up its head, it has never been able to maintain a 
standing for itself, and with unbroken courage and indefati- 
gable power of will thinking humanity has ever started out 
anew upon the search after truth. And this fact claims an 

explanation. 

§ 45. Wisdom 

The threatening and of itself almost necessary dominion 
of Scepticism, stranded first upon the ever more or less prob- 
lematical phenomenon which is called Wisdom. In order to 
appreciate the meaning of this phenomenon, the combina- 
tion " philo-sophia " should not claim our first attention, 
since it identifies " wisdom " too greatly with " science," and 
the leading characteristic of " wisdom " is that it is not the 
result of discursive thought. An uneducated and even an 
illiterate man may convey in large measure the impression of 
being a wise man ; while, on the other hand, scientifically 
developed persons often fall short in wisdom of sense. The 
etymology of the words, by which the conception of " wis- 
dom " is expressed in different languages, makes this dis- 
tinction between a scientific disposition and a disposition for 
wisdom to be clearly seen. Wisdom (sapientia) and science 
(scientia) are not the same. Sapere means to taste, to try, 
and in its metaphoric use points to a knowledge of things 
which expresses itself not theoretically, but practically, and 
works intuitively. The Greek word crd^o? (wisdom), in con- 
nection with cra^?;?, craTT/od?, and perhaps with otto?, belongs 
evidently to the same root, and points also to a radical-word 
which indicated the action of smelling or tasting. The Ger- 
manic word "wise" takes no account with the origin of this 
peculiar knowledge, but with its outcome. Wisel is the well- 
known name of the queen of the bees, who, taking the lead, 



120 § 45. WISDOM [Div. II 

by this superiority governs the entire swarm. Here also the 
practical element of knowledge appears in the foreground. 
He is wise who knows and sees how things mast go, and 
who for this reason is followed by others. With the limited 
development of Semitic etymology, the HebreAv expression 
D!Dn is less clear, but from the description which the Chok- 
matic writings give us of this " wisdom," it appears the more 
convincingly that the Hebrew understood this wisdom to 
be something entirely different from what we call scientific 
development, and in this conception thought rather of a 
practical-intuitive understanding. The derivation of nDH, 
which means to cleave to something^ would agree very well 
with this, as an indication of the spirit's sympathy with 
the object from which this Chokmatic knowledge is born. 
Phrases which are in common use with us, also, such as, for 
instance : " You have wisely left it alone," " When the wine 
is in the man, wisdom is in the can " ; " He is a wise man" ; 
or the Bible-text : "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask 
of God"; all agree entirely with this etymological result. 
The root-idea always appears to be, that one possesses a 
certain natural understanding of the nature and process of 
things, and understands the art of accommodating himself 
to them in practical life. Wisdom has nothing to do, 
therefore, with intellectual abstraction, but clings immedi- 
ately to the reality, proceeds from it and works out an effect 
upon it. But again, it is not artistic skill, nor what is called 
talent, for it is not the action which proceeds from the 
insight but the insight itself which stands in the fore- 
ground. Wisdom is the quiet possession of insight which 
imparts power, and is at the disposal of the subject, even 
when this subject is not called to action. Wisdom is also 
distinguished from artistic skill and talent, in that it bears 
an universal character. He who excels in a certain depart- 
ment of science is not ivise^ neither is he wise who excels 
in a certain trade. Such an one-sided development of skill 
is rather opposed to the root-idea of wisdom. He who is 
wise, is centrally wise, i.e. he has a general disposition of 
mind which, Avhatever comes, enables him to have an accu- 



Chap. II] § 45. WISDOM 121 

rate view of things, in conformity with which to choose and 
act with tact and with discretion. As the result, therefore, 
it may be stated that entirely apart from the development 
of science, there is in certain persons an aprioristic, not 
acquired, general insight^ which in its efficient, practical 
excellence shows itself in harmony with the reality of things. 
But if among your acquaintances you meet with but few 
persons who have this insight to such an extent as to entitle 
them to the epithet of "wise folk," all the others are not 
fools ; and yet only this antithetical conception of foolish- 
ness elucidates sufficiently the exact conception of wisdom, 
pLfool and a lunatic are not the same. An insane man is he 
whose consciousness works in the wrong way, so that all 
normal insight has become impossible for him. A fool^ on 
the other hand, is he whose consciousness works normally, 
but who himself stands so crookedly over against the reality 
of things, that he makes mistake upon mistake and con- 
stantly makes the wrong move on the chess-board of life. 
He acts foolishly who makes an evident mistake in his 
representation of reality, and who in consequence of his 
noticeable lack of accurate insight, chooses the very thing 
that will serve him a wrong end. He lacks the proper 
relation to the reality, and this accounts for his mistakes. 
Between these "wise folk" and these "fools" stands the 
great mass of humanity, who in all possible gradations 
form the transition from the wise to the foolish ; while 
among these general masses is found what used to be called 
a sound mind^ common sense, le sens commun. This implies 
something that does not scale the heights of wisdom, but 
which, nevertheless, maintains a relation to it and offers a gen- 
eral basis for it. We grant that, more especially since the close 
of the last century, this expression "common sense" has 
been used synonymously with that analogous " public opin- 
ion " in which the weakened form of Rationalism reflected 
itself, and that this spectre has repeatedly been evoked to 
banish idealism, to mock the faith, and to hush every nobler 
feeling; but this was simple abuse. Originally, "common 
sense " meant by no means the iteration of the program of 



122 ^ § 45. WISDOM [Div. II 

a particular school, but, on the contrary, a certain accuracy 
of tact, by which, in utter disregard of the pretensions of 
the schools, public opinion followed a track which turned 
neither too far to the right nor to the left. This weakened 
wisdom, which generally directs the course of life, occasion- 
ally forsook public opinion, and this gave foolishness the 
upper hand, and mad counsels free courses ; but, in the long 
run, common sense almost always gained the day. And in 
individual persons it is found, that if the particular " wise 
folk " be excluded, one class is inclined to foolishness, while 
another class remains subject to the influence of a weakened 
wisdom, and the latter are said to be the people of coimnon 
sense; a term which does not so much express a personal 
gift (charisma)^ as the fact that they sail in safe channels. 
If the phenomenon itself be thus sufficiently established, 
the question arises, how, culminating in wisdom and finding 
its antithesis m folly ^ this phenomenon of "common sense" 
is to be psychologically interpreted. It is not the fruit of 
early training, it is not the result of study, neither is it 
the effect of constant practice. Though it is granted that 
these three factors facilitate and strengthen the clear opera- 
tions of this common sense and of this wisdom, the phenome- 
non itself does not find its origin in them. Two young men, 
brought up in the same social circle, of like educational 
advantages and of similar experience, will differ widely 
in point of wisdom ; one will become a wise man, while 
with the other life will be a constant struggle. Thus we 
have to do with a certain capacity of the human mind, 
which is not introduced into it from without, but which is 
present in that mind as such, and abides there. The Dutch 
language has the beautiful word " be-se/-fen " (to sense), 
which etymologically is connected with the root of sop-ientia, 
and indicates a certain immediate affinity to that which 
exists outside of us. In this sense prudence and wisdom are 
innate ; not an innate conception, but an insight which pro- 
ceeds immediately from the affinity in which by nature we 
stand to the world about us, and to the world of higher 
things. Both point to a condition in which, if we may so 



Chap. II] § 45. WISDOM 123 

express it, msmfelt Nature's pulse beat; in which he shared 
the life of every animate thing, and so perceived and un- 
derstood it ; and in which, moreover, he also apprehended 
the higher life not as something foreign to himself, but as 
"sensing" it in his own sense of existence. Or if we look 
ahead, both phenomena lie in the line, at whose end the 
seeing (6ea)pelv) is reached, "the knowing as we are known." 
The energy of this intuition is now broken. With some it 
seems entirely lost, and these are called "fools." With 
some others it still works comparatively with great effect, 
for which reason they are called, preeminently, the wise folk. 
And between these extremes range the people of common 
sense ; so called because in them something is still found 
of the old, sound, primitive force (Urkraft) of the human 
mind. 

Now it is readily seen what a formidable dam wisdom and 
common sense prove against the destructive floods of Scepti- 
cism. If there were no other way open to knowledge than that 
which discursive thought provides, the subjective character 
which is inseparable from all higher science, the uncer- 
tainty which is the penalty of sin, and the impossibility be- 
tween .truth and falsehood to decide what shall be objectively 
compulsory would encourage Scepticism to strike ever deeper 
root. But since an entirely different way of knowledge is 
disclosed to us by ivisdom and its allied common sense, 
which, independent of scientific investigation, has a start- 
ing-point of its own, this intuitive knowledge, founded on 
fixed perceptions given with our consciousness itself, offers 
a saving counterpoise to Scepticism. For now we have a 
certain insight, and on the ground of this insight a relative 
certainty, which has no connection with the discursive con- 
flict between truth and falsehood, and which, being constantly 
confirmed in the fiery test of practical application in daily- 
life, gives us a starting-point by which the conviction main- 
tains itself in us that we are able to grasp the truth of 
things. And since this wisdom and common sense determine 
those very issues and principles of life, against which scepti- 
cism directs its most critical and important attacks, we find 



124 § 45. WISDOM [Div. II 

in tliis plienomenoD, so mysterious in itself, a saving strength 
which enables the human mind to effect its escape from the 
clutches of Scepticism. This wisdom can never supersede 
discursive thought, nor can it take the place of empiricism, 
but it has the general universal tendency to exclude follies 
from the processes of discursive thought, and in empirical 
investigation to promote the accuracy of our tact. 

In answer to the objection that it is difficult to harmonize 
this interpretation of "wisdom" with the conception of ao(f>ia 
in our word "philosophy" Q^iXoao^ia)^ we observe that for 
a JQst criticism of this apparent objection we must go back 
to the original conception of " wisdom " as held by the 
Greeks, and to the most ancient meaning of the combination 
of (i)i\€lv with this word. As for " wisdom," we refer first 
of all to the noteworthy sentence of Heraclitus : ao(f>i7] aXr]- 
Oea Xeyeiv koX Trotelv Kara ^vg-lv iTra'Covra'^y i.e. " Wisdom con- 
sists in knowing how to speak the truth, and how to live 
according to nature," in which the last words especially 
indicate that " wisdom " is taken as ripening from a natural 
instinct, while the verb " to live " (iroielv) exhibits its prac- 
tical character. With Thales only it was thought that 
" wisdom " also bore a somewhat theoretical character. See 
Plutarch's Life of Solon, 3, 9: "And, on the whole, it is 
likely that the conception of wisdom was at that time carried 
further by Solon alone, in speculation, than its significance in 
common use ; but in the case of others the name ' wisdom ' 
arose from its use in civil affairs." What Xenophon narrates 
concerning Socrates leads to the same conclusion. See Xen. 
Mem, III. 9, 4; "(Socrates) did not separate (i.e. distin- 
guish between) wisdom and prudence," even in this sense 
that " Those who do not act rightly he considered neither 
wise nor prudent." Undoubtedly with Plato it is already 
"A possession of the truth in contemplation" (p. 414, 5), 
and with Aristotle, " The science of things divine and 
human"; but this is not the original conception. With the 
oldest philosophers we do not find the mention of a phi- 
losophy which is the result of investigation. Their philoso- 
phy is rather an exposition of their insight into the relation 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 125 

of things, in the elaboration of which they deal more freely 
with their phantasy than with empiricism. Even in the 
word " theory " this ancient meaning of the wisdom-concep- 
tion is still active. Etymologically, "theoria" refers to 
intuition^ and as such it has nothing in common with the 
idea which we attach to the theoretical. 

§ 46. Faith 

Even more effectually than by " wisdom " Scepticism is 
counteracted by "faith" (irCan^^. Faith in this connection 
is taken formally, and hence considered quite apart from all 
content. By " faith " here, then, we do not mean the " faith 
in Christ Jesus " in its saving efficacy for the sinner, nor yet 
the " faith in God " which is fundamental to all religion, 
but that formal function of the life of our soul which is 
fundamental to every fact in our human consciousness. 
The common antithesis between "faith and knowledge" 
places the content obtained by faith in contrast to the con- 
tent obtained by knowledge. Thus we face two dissimilar 
magnitudes, which are susceptible neither of comparison nor 
of amalgamation. We encounter iron and clay, as Daniel 
pictures it; elements which refuse to intermingle. To take a 
position with reference also to this antithesis, it is necessary 
that we go back to the formal function of faith, and inves- 
tigate whether this function does or does not exhibit an 
universal character. For if it does, this universal function 
of faith must also influence that particular function by 
which the scientific result is obtained, and the extent is 
traceable to which the function of faith is able to exert 
itself, as well as the point where its working stops. We 
purposely consider this function of faith, next to wisdom, 
as a similar reaction against Scepticism. All Scepticism 
originates from the impression that our certainty depends 
upon the result of our scientific research. Since, however, 
this result constantly appears to be governed by subjective 
influences, and is affected by the conflict between truth 
and falsehood which is the result of sin, there is no defence 
against Scepticism except in the subject itself. The defence 



126 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

against Scepticism which the subject provides, can prove no 
benefit to our science, except it is evident that this defence 
bears no individual-subjective character ; but that in its 
real significance it belongs to the subject as such, and may 
therefore be called subjective in a general and communal 
sense. And faith exhibits this character. 

In the explanation of this two difficulties present them- 
selves, which we must not allow to overshadow us. The 
first difficulty is, that faith is a conception which has been 
introduced into our common speech, especially from the New 
Testament, and has received thereby a religious, and in a 
more restricted sense a soteriological, stamp. Thus under- 
stood, this conception has no place in our Erkenntniss-theo- 
rie, and the appearance is given that faith bears no universal 
character at all. The second difficulty is, that profane 
literature almost never uses the conception of faith tech- 
nically, and hence attaches no definite meaning to it. The 
old philosophy, for instance, never deals with faith as with 
a special function of the soul. It appears, however, as if 
Pythagoras attached something more to this conception and 
that he classified it, as we learn in TheoL AritJim. X., p. 60, 
how the Pythagoreans "in their mystical explanations called 
it (i.e. TTi(TTL<^^ at one time the world ; at another, the heavens ; 
still again, the universe ; then again, fate and eternity ; and, 
yet again, might, faith, necessity "; yet this appears to be the 
case in a very superficial sense only, since of this Trto-rt? at 
once this more exact explanation is given in Theol. Arithm,, 
p. 61: " The number Ten indeed is called belief (or faith), 
since according to Philolaos by (the number) Ten, and its 
parts, which have to do primarily with realities, we have a 
clear idea of Belief." It may not be denied that Philolaos 
saw that in some instances faith stands on a line with avdy/cr] 
(necessity); but he makes no mention of a general applica- 
tion of this conception. 

Neither of these two difficulties, however, should prevent 
us from making a more general application of this conception. 
Not the difficulty derived from the Holy Scriptures, since 
Heb. xi. 1 anticipates our wish to restore faith to its more 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 127 

general meaning. There we read that faith is ''the assur- 
ance (wTTocTTacrt?) of things hoped for, the proving (e\e7;^09) 
of things not seen." Thus faith is here taken neither in 
an exclusively religious sense, much less in a soteriological 
significance, but very generally as an " assurance " and " prov- 
ing "of objects which escape our perception, either because 
they do not yet exist (ra e\7n^6[ieva)^ or because they do 
not show themselves (ra iultj ^Xeirofieva). Far from exclud- 
ing, therefore, a more general interpretation, the Scripture 
itself calls our attention to it. And as for the backwardness 
of profane literature in defining this conception more exactly, 
the above-quoted saying of the Pythagoreans shows that the 
idea of taking up faith as a link in a demonstration was not 
entirely foreign to the ancients ; and this appears stronger 
still from what Plutarch writes QMor. ^^Q^ 5), "that in di- 
vine things no demonstration (Jtirohei^i^') is to be obtained," 
and that it is not needed, " For the traditional and ancient 
faith is sufficient ; than which it is not possible to express 
nor discover a clearer proof ; but this is, in itself, a sort of 
underlying common foundation and support for piety," — 
words which, although limited to the domain of religion, and 
rather used in connection with tradition, nevertheless betray 
a definite agreement with the teaching of Heb. xi. 1, and 
place faith as the ground of certainty over against " assur- 
ance." 

Neither the etymology of Trtb-Tt? and the words synony- 
mous with it in other languages, nor the use of these words, 
prove any obstacle in the way of this general application. 
Faith with the root-idea of ireiQaa (to persuade), and in con- 
nection with the derivatives Trto-rd?, TnaToco^ ireTroCdr^cn^^ arru- 
Beco^ aireiOr)'^^ and aireidaa^ points etymologically to an action 
by which our consciousness is forced to surrender itself, and 
to hold something for true, to confide in something and to 
obey something. Here, then, we have nothing but a certain 
power which is exercised upon our consciousness, to which it 
is forced to subject itself. Upon our consciousness, which is 
first unstable, uncertain, and tossed about, a check is placed 
which puts an end to uncertainty. There is a restraint im- 



128 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

posed on us from which we cannot escape. Or, as far as our 
consciousness itself desires this stability, this '' underlying 
foundation and support " (^eSpa fcal ^dai^ vc^earMcra)^ as Plu- 
tarch expressed it, or, as Heb. xi. 1 states it, this "assur- 
ance '' and this "proving" are offered us. Where the action 
of the ireiOeiv (persuasion) is ended, certainty is obtained. 
In the middle voice irelOecrOaL (to be persuaded) expresses the 
function of the soul by which it establishes itself in that sta- 
bility. And faith therefore may express this certainty itself, 
as well as the action by which I grasp it. The same root- 
idea lies in p^^^^• J^^ (amen) is that which stands fast and 
does not change. The Hiphil expresses that by which this 
certainty is born in us. And our believing comes from a dif- 
ferent source, but it allows the self -same universal tendency. 
With the Latin luhet^ allied to the Sanscrit luhh^ which 
means to appropriate something to oneself, and which stands 
in immediate connection with the Dutch words lieven and 
loven^ it points to a cleaving to something, to holding fast 
to something, and to being linked to it by an inner sym- 
pathy. Thus in he-lieving the relation is more prominent 
than in irCaTt^i or in Hil^K, but that relation is taken as 

T v: ' 

something not uncertain, but certain. He who cleaves to 
something holds himself fast to it, leans upon and trusts in 
it ; while in this believing lies the fine secondary meaning, 
that this cleaving unto, this holding fast to, is accom- 
plished by an inward impulse. And if the etymology of 
any of these expressions does not prevent a more general 
application of this word, the difficulty presented in the 
accepted use of these words is equally insignificant. Not 
only was this iriarLv e%€tv (to have faith), a current term in 
Greek, applied to every department of life, and the tendency 
of I'^P^n almost wider still (see, for instance, Deut. xxviii. QQ^ 
Judges xi. 20, etc.), but, what is more noteworthy, in our 
Christian society the use of the word " to believe " is limited 
so little to the religious and soteriological domain, that even 
more than " to have faith " the term " to believe " has be- 
come common property for every relation. 

There is no objection, therefore, to the use of the tQvvcs. faith 



CnAi. II] §46. FAITH 129 

for that function of the soul Q^vyrj) by which it obtains cer- 
tainty directly and immediately, without the aid of discursive 
demonstration. This places faith over against " demonstra- 
tion " ; but not of itself over against knoiving. This would 
be so, if our knowledge and its content came to us exclu- 
sively by observation and demonstration, but, as we tried to 
prove in § 37, this is not so. To know and knowledge^ to know 
and understanding^ are not the same. I knoiv all those things 
the existence of which, together with some relations of this 
existence, is actual fact to me. No demonstration can ever 
establish with mathematical certainty the question that gov- 
erns your whole life, — who it is that has begotten you ; 
and yet under ordinary circumstances no one hesitates to 
declare, "I know that this man is my father." For though 
men may talk here of the theory of probabilities, it is not at 
all to the point. A proof proves only what it proves defi- 
nitely and conclusively, and everything which in the end 
misses this conclusive character is not obtained by your 
demonstration but from eUewhere; and this other source of 
certainty is the very point in question. Or rather, — for 
even now we do not speak with sufficient emphasis, — this 
other source, which we call faith, is the only source of cer- 
tainty, equally for what you prove definitely and conclusively 
by demonstration. 

That this is not generally so understood can only be ex- 
plained from the fact that, in the search after the means at 
our command by which to obtain knowledge, the investi- 
gation is abandoned before it is finished. The building is 
examined, and its foundation, and sometimes even the piles 
that are underneath, but the ground on which the lowest 
points of these piles rest is not explored. Or to state it in 
another way, let us say that the need is felt of a continuous 
line drawn from the outermost point in the periphery of the 
object to the centre of your ego; but when the ego is as 
nearly reached as possible, the distance which still separates 
us from it is not bridged ; we simply vault the gulf. And 
this is not lawful, because it is illogical. Of necessity 
a chain must fall when a single link is wanting; for the 



130 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

two links wliicli it ought to connect lose their point of 
union. 

This comes out at once in the self-consciousness by which 
we gay I. A child, in which self-consciousness has not yet 
awakened, speaks of itself in the third person. There is 
some thinking in the child, and a certain amount of knowl- 
edge, but it is not yet his possession. There is a property, 
but the owner is still anonymous. Meanwhile, this self- 
consciousness is an impenetrable mystery to us. To sa}^ that 
it originates through comparison is a vain attempt to soothe 
oneself with words, for the very subject to be compared is 
here in question. Neither can it be said that self-consciousness 
is identical with the nature of our soul, for then it ought also 
to be active in the child, and ought to stay with us under all 
circumstances of life, and that sort of insanity by which one 
thinks himself to be another would annul our human nature. 
Self-consciousness, therefore, is an entirely unaccountable 
phenomenon in the life of the soul, which reveals its activity 
only at a certain age, which sometimes may slumber, and 
may lose itself for years in insanity. It is a phenomenon 
that stays by us in the unconscious condition of our sleep, 
for in our dreams also it is ourselves who suffer anxiety and 
all things move themselves about our person. Neither is 
this self-consciousness an accidental something to that science 
which we seek to obtain. On this self-consciousness hangs 
the subject that investigates, and without that subject 
no investigation is conceivable. He with whom this self- 
consciousness is still wanting is, like the child, unable 
to separate himself from the object, and equally unable 
to draw conclusions from his inward perceptions. Thus 
the starting-point actually lies in this self-consciousness, 
and there must ever be a gap if this self-consciousness 
be not duly considered. From this it also follows, that 
without faith you miss the starting-point of all knowledge. 
The expression, "you must believe in yourself," has cer- 
tainly been abused in humanistic circles to weaken both the 
denial of ourselves and our faith in God, but it is actually 
the case that he who does not begin hy believing in himself 



Chap. II] §46. FAITH 131 

cannot progress a single step. Nothing but faith can ever 
give you certainty in your consciousness of the existence of 
your ego; and every proof to the sum^ which you might 
endeavor to furnish by the exhibition of your will^ or if 
need be by the revelation of your ill will, etc., will have no 
force of demonstration, except before all things else, on 
the ground of faith, the knowledge of your ego is established 
for yourself. In the cogito ergo sum the logical fault has 
indeed long since been shown. The ego, which is to be 
proved in the Bum, is already assumed in the premise by the 
cogito. 

But the indispensableness of faith goes much farther, and 
it may safely be said that with the so-called exact sciences 
there is no investigation, nor any conclusion conceivable 
except in so far as the observation in the investigation and 
the reasoning in the conclusion are grounded in faith. No 
play is intended here on the word " faith." Faith is taken by 
us in its most real sense. By faith you are sure of all those 
things of which you have a firm conviction, but which con- 
viction is not the outcome of observation or demonstration. 
This may result from indolence by which you apply the 
much easier and ever ready faith, where the more arduous 
duty of observation and demonstration is demanded. But 
this is the abuse of faith, which should ever be reproved. 
In this abuse, however, the formal character of faith remains 
inviolate. Properly used or misused, faith is and always 
will be a means of becoming firmly convinced of a thing, 
and of making this conviction the starting-point of conduct, 
while for this conviction no empirical or demonstrative proof 
is offered or found. Faith can never be anything else but 
an immediate act of our consciousness, by which certainty is 
established in that consciousness on any point outside of 
observation or demonstration. " The ground on which your 
faith rests," and "the ulterior ground of your faith," are 
often spoken of, but in all such expressions faith itself is not 
meant, but only its content, and this does not concern us 
now. Faith here is taken merely as the means or instrument 
by which to possess certainty, and as such it not only needs 



132 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

no demonstration, but allows none. And in that sense we 
referred to it in the first place, as the certainty concern- 
ing our ego in our own self-consciousness, Avliich precedes 
every act of thought or observation, and which can only 
be established in us by faith, or, if you please, is not ac- 
quired by us, but is a received good, of which no account 
can be given. 

This is equally true of the starting-point of perception. 
All perception takes place through the senses, whether you 
allow them to act naturally, or whether you reinforce 
them by a technical apparatus. The case, however, is not 
that our senses perceive, for our ego perceives by means of 
those senses. The sick man who lies in bed with his eyes 
wide open, but whose mind is affected, perceives nothing ; 
even though the images of his surroundings are reflected on 
the retina of his eyes. While you sleep, many sounds 
may vibrate in the air-waves of your room, but not waken 
you to hear and perceive them. To stop short with the 
senses is, therefore, both unscientific and superficial. The 
way of knowledge certainly leads through the senses, but 
it extends farther. It is also continued from the sense 
through the nerves and the brain, and back of these oiit of 
our sensorial avenues to that mysterious something which 
we call our consciousness, and, in the centrum of that con- 
sciousness, to what we call our ego. The students of the 
so-called exact sciences, who think that their as yet un- 
demonstrated, immediate knowledge of the object rests ex- 
clusively upon the action of the senses, are thus entirely 
mistaken, and allow themselves a leap to which they have 
no right. If their ego is to obtain knowledge of the object, 
they must not stop with the action of the senses, but ask 
how the ego acquires certainty of the reality of the percep- 
tion. By means of your senses, you receive sensations and 
impressions ; but in your consciousness the result of this 
consists of forms, images, shapes, and figures, which are not 
dissimilar to those which loom up before your mind outside 
of perception, — in imagination, in dreams, or in moments of 
ecstasy. Your perception by means of your senses acquires 



CiiAP. II] §46. FAITH 133 

value only when you know that your senses gave you 
movements in your sensorial nerve-life, which came from 
a real object, and in their changes and successions are 
caused by the state of this object. Actually it amounts 
to this : that your ego believes in your senses. If by faith 
the action of your senses is brought into the relation of 
certainty with your ego^ then you can depend upon per- 
ception by means of your senses, but not before. And 
the perception of faith and the certainty which it gives 
are so forcible that, as a rule, we grasp immediately the 
distinction between the products of dream, fancy and of 
perception. The action of faith becomes weaker when the 
condition of mind becomes abnormal, as in delirium of 
fever, in moments of anxiety, in hypochondria, or sudden 
insanity ; then a feeling of uncertainty overtakes us as 
to what we perceive or think we perceive, which we know 
nothing of in a normal condition, when faith works regu- 
larly. It must be granted that wilful deception may tempt 
us to take for real what exists merely in appearance, but 
even these ever more or less humiliating experiences do 
not hinder us from resuming immediately our normal stand 
on realit}^, thanks to this faith. He who was deceived 
by the apparition of a ghost, which he afterward discovered 
to be unreal, will not be uncertain whether a runaway horse 
in the street is a real phenomenon or not, but will step out 
of the way of it. If, thus, it must be granted that this faith, 
by which our ego believes in our senses, can become abnor- 
mal by a perplexity of our mind, and in like manner can 
become the dupe of delusion, nevertheless this faith is, and 
always will be, a certainty-yielding process in our mind, 
which at once resumes its dominion. , 

This is even so true that we actually owe all our convic- 
tions of the reality of the object exclusively to faith. With- 
out faith you can never go from your ego to the non-ego; 
there is no other bridge to be constructed from phenomena 
to noumena ; and scientifically all the results of observation 
hang in air. The line from Kant to Fichte is the only 
line along which you may continue operations. It is true 



134 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

that perception is susceptible of verification : the perception 
of one sense by that of the other ; the perception of to-day 
by that of to-morrow ; the perception of A by that of B. 
But in the first place, this is no help whatever as long as 
faith provides no certainty concerning a single perception. 
You cannot verify x by x. And on the other hand, it is 
an undoubted fact that, with the exception perhaps of some 
weak-minded philosopher, every man, without thinking of 
verification or applying any verification whatever, is cer- 
tain every moment of the day that his surroundings actually 
are as they appear ; so that on the ground of this certainty 
he acts and works without the least hesitation. When you 
sit in your room and some one comes in and addresses you, 
you do not consider it your first duty to verify this fact, 
for in that very moment you are certain that this person 
stands before you and speaks to you ; and you deal with 
this fact and act accordingly. All human intercourse is 
founded on this fact, as is also all observation, and conse- 
quently all scientific knowledge, which is built up on 
observation ; and this fact falls away at once if faith 
does not work in you to make your ego believe in your 
senses. 

This is so true, that the most exact science properly begins 
its scientific task in the higher sense only when observation 
is finished. To observe bacteria or microbes is by itself as 
little an act of science as the perception of horses and cows 
pasturing in the meadow. The only difference between the 
two is, that horses and cows in the meadow are perceptible 
with the naked eye, and bacteria and microbes can be ob- 
served only with the reinforced eye. Let no one, however, 
be misled. The reinforcement of the eye is partly the result 
of invention, and partly of scientific construction. But the 
bacteriologist, who uses a maximum microscope in his labo- 
ratory, did not make this himself, he bought it ; and all he 
does is to see by means of his microscope. An aged person 
can no longer distinguish letters with his naked eye and buys 
glasses ; but who will assert that he performs a scientific act, 
simply because with the aid of glasses he now reads what 



Chap. II] §46. FAITH 135 

once he read without glasses. Technical skill is called into 
play in the use of the microscope ; accuracy also ; and a 
certain inventive instinct in the statement of what one ob- 
serves. Scientific knowledge of the department in which 
one observes will also be a requisite. All this, however, does 
not deny that the observation itself bears no scientific char- 
acter, and that the scientific task of the observer only begins 
when the result of the observation has been obtained. The 
farmer who, in his stables and fields, observes the data and 
phenomena of nature, exercises virtually the same function 
as the observer in his laboratory. To perceive is the com- 
mon function of man, and perception in a full-grown man is 
not scientific study because an adult perceives more and 
better than a child. He who has a sharp and penetrating 
eye sees all sorts of things which a common observer does 
not see, but who has ever thought of calling the observation 
of a sharp-seeing man scientific? If then the observer in 
his laboratory sees with the reinforced eye what would not 
reveal itself in any other way, how can this put the stamp of 
science on his labor? If suddenly our eye should be so 
greatly strengthened as to equal the microscope in power of 
vision, then every one would see what he sees. His advan- 
tage consists simply in this, that his eye is reinforced. Rein- 
forced in the same way as the eye of the pilot on the bridge 
of a ship is reinforced, so that he discovers the approach 
of a coming ship at a great distance. Reinforced in the 
same way as the eye of the Alpine huntsman, who through 
the spy-glass discovers from afar the wild goat on the gla- 
cier. Only with a difference of degree. But how can this 
difference of degree in the reinforcement of vision ever lend 
a scientific character to work in the laboratory, which no one 
ever grants to a sea-captain or chamois-hunter ? Grant there- 
fore that the preparation of the chemist is scientific, that his 
purpose lies in science, that presently he will go to work sci- 
entifically with what has been observed. Very well, if only 
you concede that his observation as such lacks all scientific 
character, and that a chemist who confined himself to obser- 
vation would not be prosecuting science at all. All certainty 



136 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

indeed, as far as obtained by perception and observation alone, 
rests exclusively on the faith that that which we acquire by 
the senses deserves our confidence. 

If such is the case with the self-consciousness of our ego^ 
and with the certainty obtained by observation, it is equally 
so with demonstration or with the action of our reasoning 
understanding. Here also you can pursue no course, unless 
you have a point of departure. For this reason men have 
always recognized axioms as fixed principles introductory to 
demonstration. This word, however, is not happily chosen, 
since it suggests an opinion, or a meaning ; but even in 
this less-happily chosen word you confess that the funda- 
mental principles on which you build are not results of dem- 
onstration ; indeed, that they are not capable of proof. All 
you can say of them is, that no one denies them ; that every 
one, consciously or unconsciously, consents to them ; so that 
you will meet no opposition if you start out from them. 
This by itself however is nothing more than an argumen- 
tum ad homines, and no proof whatever. Nothing remains, 
therefore, but to declare that these axioms are given with 
our self-consciousness itself ; that they inhere in it ; that 
they are inseparable from it ; and that of themselves they 
bring their certainty with them. Since certainty is your 
highest aim, nothing more can be demanded than the entire 
certainty of these axioms. And what is this again but faith ? 
To you they are sure, they are lifted above every ques- 
tion of doubt, they offer you certainty in the fullest sense, 
not because you can prove them, but because you uncondi- 
tionally believe them. Thus faith is here also the mysteri- 
ous bond which binds your ego to these axioms. It certainly 
has happened, and may happen again, that one will accept all 
too quickly as an axiom, what later on will appear suscepti- 
ble of proof ; but at best this only shows that in connection 
with what we observed above about "wisdom" our mind also 
has intuitive knowledge, and that this intuitive knowledge 
may readily be mistaken for the formal action of our faith. 
If one takes merely the identity-conception that A = A, the 
fact is still a fact that the conviction itself, which forms 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 137 

the starting-point for all demonstration, is not fixed by dem- 
onstration, but only and alone by faith. 

This has by no means exhausted the significance of faith 
for the "way of knowledge." As faith provides us the 
starting-point for our observation and the axiomatic start- 
ing-point for every demonstration, it also offers us the 
motive for the construction of science. This motive lies in 
the codification of the general laws which govern the phe- 
nomena. Observation itself is no science yet in its higher 
sense. Science is born of observation only when from those 
phenomena, each of which by itself furnishes nothing more 
than a concrete and separate case, we have reached the 
universal law which governs all these phenomena in their 
changes. You admit that without certainty of the existence 
and of the validity of these laws, all scientifice effort is futile. 
But how do you obtain the knowledge of these laws ? Have 
you investigated beforehand all the phenomena that belong 
to one class, and do you now conclude, that because the 
same activity is seen to operate in all these phenomena in 
the same way, it should therefore be the law which, thus 
described, governs this class of phenomena? Of course not. 
It is not possible for you to do this. The very idea of such 
a general law even excludes such an all-embracing investiga- 
tion. Just because it shall be a general law, it must have 
been valid in the ages when you were not yet born, and must 
be valid in the ages when jou shall be no more. Moreover, 
while you live it must be valid everywhere, even in those 
places where you are not present, in which places, therefore, 
observation is impossible for you. Moreover, suppose that 
you had acquired your knowledge of this law in the afore- 
mentioned way, you would have lost your interest in it. 
For that which interests you in the knowledge of such 
a law, is the very fact that it enables you to state how this 
group of phenomena was conditioned before you were born, 
and how it shall be after you are gone. This laAV holds the 
key to the mystery, and it owes its attraction to this charm. 
But how did you acquire the knowledge of this law? You 
have observed a certain number of cases, which observation 



138 § 46. FAITH [Div. II 

shows you a certain constant action ; this constant action 
makes you surmise that this action will always be constant ; 
you hear of others who have built like conclusions upon like 
observations ; you apply a special test, and it appears that 
in this way you are able to call the same action into life ; 
no case is known to you in which this action has not shown 
itself ; no one contradicts your surmise ; and every one who 
devotes his attention to what has attracted yours, arrives at 
the same conclusion : and, upon this ground, it is scientifically 
determined that in this group of phenomena such and such 
a law operates thus and so. Very well ! But have you now 
demonstrated this law? Is the certainty which you have of 
the existence of this law, the result of demonstration ? Your 
demonstration cannot extend farther than your observation, 
and your observation covered certainly not one billionth part 
of the cases which are concerned. Whether the post hoc in 
the cases observed is at the same time a propter hoc^ can by 
no means always be empirically proved. This proof is only 
given when the genetic operation of the cause can be traced 
in its entire development. But no one hesitates to adopt a 
general conclusion, even where this genetic knowledge is 
wanting. That quinine counteracts intermittent fever is a 
generally accepted conclusion, even though no one has ever 
been able to explain genetically the action of quinine on the 
blood. In this case, however, no harm is done. But without 
knowing the genetic action of vaccine, the general conclusion 
was considered equally justifiable, that inoculation with 
this virus is a harmless preventive against smallpox, and, 
on the ground of this so-called scientifically discovered law 
vaccination has been enforced by public authority; while 
now, alas, in the end it appears how carelessly this conclu- 
sion was drawn. Hence extreme care is necessarj^, lest we 
proclaim as a general law what afterward appears to rest 
on defective observation. But even though we pass these 
cases by, and confine ourselves to those general laws which 
are no longer contradicted, the question ever returns, What 
foundation have you for your confidence that your conclu- 
sion is correct ? You say : " I can show this at once and 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 139 

prove that it is so, since no one can call a phenomenon into 
being in which this law does not show itself." And again 
we say: Very well I The law of gravitation, etc., is as certain 
to us as to you ; but we ask : Where is your proof? And 
to this question no answer can be given, except that here 
also faith enters in and makes you believe in the existence 
and in the absolute validity of such a law. Not that 
the formula of this particular law rests on faith. The 
formula is the result of your investigation. But the idea 
itself that there are such laws, and that when certain phe- 
nomena exhibit themselves, you are certain of the existence 
of such laws, does not result from your demonstration, but 
is assumed in your demonstration and is the basis on which 
your demonstration rests, and in the end it appears the 
means by which your certainty is obtained. Without faith 
in the existence of the general in the special, in laws which 
govern this special, and in your right to build a general con- 
clusion on a given number of observations, you would never 
come to acknowledge such a law. For one of the primor- 
dial principles in your logic reads : A particulari ad generale 
non valet conclusio, i.e. no conclusion from the special to 
the general, is valid. Just so, but all your observations deal 
with the special only. Hence you would never reach a gen- 
eral conclusion if faith did not give you both the idea of 
the general and the right to accept it as a fact. 

Though this applies to all the sciences, it nevertheless 
creates no uneasiness in the man of science, because every 
student has the faith, in this universal sense, which is neces- 
sary for the self-consciousness of the ego^ for securing the 
axiomatic starting-point and for the forming of general 
conclusions. This harmony may momentarily be disturbed 
by the report that some people still believe in the reality 
of miracle ; but this alarming suggestion is readily dismissed. 
If miracles are real, they have no place in common science, 
for the very reason that they are miracles. Thus in scientific 
investigation faith is virtually taken as a quantity that can 
be neglected, because it is the same in all, and therefore 
makes no difference in the conclusion. This, of course, 



140 §46. FAITH [Div. II 

ought not to be so, and an ever stronger protest should be 
raised against this superficiality which is so unworthy of 
the name of science ; but the false antithesis between faith 
and science is so generally current, that they who value 
science most, as a rule prefer the removal of the last vestige 
of the leaven of faith. 

But when we leave the domain of the natural, and enter 
the domain of the mixed and the spiritual sciences, what 
then ? Here, also, faith (Trtcrrt?) enters in as the indispensable 
factor, and in a way which is not the same with all. In the 
mixed and spiritual sciences we touch immediately upon the 
diversity of the subject, and constantly encounter what in a 
preceding section we explained as the fact of sin. Take his- 
tory, for instance. With the exception of a small part be- 
longing to your own times, all observation is at second, third 
and fourth hand. There is tradition. Is it trustworthy? 
A certificate bears a signature. Is it the name of the certi- 
fier ? You need to consult a document; is this document 
genuine ? In such cases doubt is not unnatural. A repre- 
sentation of events which you yourself have witnessed, is 
often made in public meetings, in the press, and in reviews, 
which you know is incorrect; this is often given by persons 
who were eye-witnesses as well as yourself ; you have no 
right in every case to assume bad faith, and yet it is some- 
times as clear to you as day. If, then, the difficulty is so 
great in establishing the truth of an event, the parties of which 
are still alive, the official records of which are at your service, 
and every particular of which is known to you, what then 
becomes of the history of bygone ages, of entirely different 
lands and countries, which comes to you from documents, the 
very language of which at times is doubtful ? This concerns 
merely the attestation of facts; and this gives chronicles, but 
no history. History demands psychological explanations ; 
the discovery of a leading motive in events ; a connection 
among these events ; and a conclusion that leads to prophetic 
insight into the future. Back of the facts, therefore, you 
must interpret the characters, the plans, and purposes of the 
actors ; and back of those persons you must search out 



Chap. II] § 40. FAITH 141 

the general impulses by which often unconsciously many 
people were impelled. As long as this general motive is not 
found, there is no science in history. Moreover, history is 
likewise a judge. The past is no kaleidoscope which you 
turn before your eye. In history there is a struggle of what 
you deem holy and true against that which you despise and 
lament. Thus you must pass judgment. Your sympathy 
and antipathy are active. In history you spy the root-life 
of what lives in yourself and in your own surroundings and 
in your own times. If this is so, how then can there 
ever be a place in the ranks of the sciences for a sci- 
ence of history, if in your authentication of the past, in 
your e:^ort to explain the past, and in your judgment of 
that past, you exclude faith and accept nothing but what has 
been obtained by the immediate observation of the senses or 
by logical demonstration ? 

What has been said of history applies, mutatis mutandis^ 
in lesser or greater measure, to all the spiritual sciences, 
simply because in all these sciences the mystery of man pre- 
sents itself, and you are as unable to bring the mystery 
of your own being, as that of your neighbor, within the 
reach of your senses or of your logic. As soon therefore 
as medical science leaves the domain of pure empiricism, 
and thus becomes scientific, it has to deal more or less with 
the same difficulties. Not only in Psychiatry alone, but in 
Physiology and in Pathology as well, does it come in contact 
with influences and processes, the explanation of which is not 
found in matter, but in the psyche. For this reason, even 
after the interesting studies of Professor Bornheim, Mag- 
netism and Hypnotism have not yet been naturalized by 
the medical science. 

Ordinary experience shows that in all contact with this 
invisible world, faith, and nothing but faith, forms the ground 
in the human personality of every act. When some one 
announces himself to us, and tells us who he is, we at once 
accept it as true. We attach value to what he tells of him- 
self, without having any proof of the truth or means of 
verification. Take away this mutual confidence from soci- 



142 § 46. FAITH [Div. II 

ety, and conversation or intercourse is no longer possible. 
And so firmly and almost ineradicably is this confidence 
rooted in us, that even the constant experience of deception 
does not impair or take away this universal foundation of 
life. Experience makes us guarded and more careful ; but 
as long as there is no reason for distrust, confidence remains 
the rule of society. This is accounted for by the fact that 
no one is able to disclose the inner life of a man except 
that man himself. What you call your observation is never 
anything else with man than the observation of his life- 
expressions. Since he has nine-tenths of these life-expressions 
entirely under his control, and is able to withhold or to 
falsify them, the knowledge of man obtained by observation 
is always extremely limited, and in itself uncertain. Not 
observation, but revelation^ is the means by which knowledge 
of the human person must come to you. Hence, you know 
next to nothing of those individuals who are deaf-mute. 
And even the revelation which a person makes to you of 
himself is by itself of no use, unless you have in your person 
the allied data by which to interpret his revelation. There 
is certainly some verification by which one can judge of the 
self -revelation of another ; but in the first place this veri- 
fication is often of little use, and, again, it can only be 
applied in special cases. Hence in most cases the judge 
must depend upon the confessions of the accused and the 
explanations of witnesses, both of which obtain their force 
of evidence almost exclusively from faith. If such is the 
case in the acquisition of knowledge of your nearest sur- 
roundings, faith is still more strongly appealed to where it 
concerns persons who live at a distance from you, or who 
lived in former times. You only know what happens in 
Japan by what other people say ; and though you may be 
entirely unable to verify these communications, you believe 
them grosso modo^ and doubt not for a moment but that on 
reaching Japan you would find the conditions as stated. 
Your representation of many a part of Africa rests on the 
information of one man. This, however, does not make a 
sceptic of yoUo Yes, though time and again you may be 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 143 

disappointed in your credulity, you do not abandon your in- 
eradicable confidence, simply because this confidence cleaves 
to your nature and is indispensable to life itself. And 
this is also true with reference to the past. Even with 
reference to your own past, you do not doubt for a moment 
that the woman whom you loved as mother was your mother, 
and that the man whom you addressed by the name of father 
was your father. You have not observed your conception 
and your birth. Equally unable are you to prove them. 
And yet when there is no special cause to make doubt com- 
pulsory^ every child lives in the glad assurance of having 
its real father and mother. And herein lies the starting- 
point of the power and right of tradition^ which, though 
frequently mixed up with mistake and falsehood, in itself 
forms the natural tie which binds our consciousness to the 
past, and so liberates it from the limitations of the present. 

All this but shows the utter untenability of the current 
representation that science establishes truth, which is equally 
binding upon all, exclusively on the ground of observation 
and demonstration, while faith is in order only in the realm 
of suppositions and of uncertainties. In every expression 
of his personality, as well as in the acquisition of scientific 
conviction, every man starts out from faith. In every 
realm faith is, and always will be, the last link by which 
the object of our knowledge is placed in connection with 
our knowing ego. Even in demonstration there is no cer- 
tainty for you because of the proof, but simply because 
you are bound to believe in the force of the demonstration. 
That this is generally lost sight of, is because faith, which 
operates in our observation and demonstration, renders this 
service in the material sciences to all individuals equally and 
of itself. This prevents the rise of a difference of opinions. 
While in the spiritual sciences it has always been necessary 
to admit a certain unknown factor in the demonstration, and 
for the sake of this x to subtract something from the abso- 
lute character of the certainty obtained, which, however, has 
been disguised under the name of evidence or moral certainty. 
And for this reason it was very important to show that 



144 § 46. FAITH [Div. II. 

faith is the element in our mind by which we obtain cer- 
tainty, not only in the spiritual, but equally in the material 
sciences. From which it follows that the lesser degree of 
certainty in the spiritual sciences is not explained by saying 
that in the spiritual sciences we have to deal with faitJi^ 
which it is not necessary to do in the material sciences ; 
but rather from the fact that in the spiritual sciences faith 
seems to operate differently in different persons. To obviate 
this difficulty the effort is now made to approach the spiritual 
sciences as much as possible from the visible world (physical 
and physicocratic psychology, etc.), but the knowledge of the 
psychical, which is the real object of these sciences, is not 
advanced thereby a single step. The cause of this unlike 
operation of faith in the domain of the spiritual sciences is 
twofold. On the one hand, the effect worked upon this 
faith by the disposition of the subject ; and on the other hand, 
the fact that in spiritual science faith operates not merely 
formally, but also presents a content. 

The first cause finds its explanation in the fact that in 
the spiritual sciences the unifying power of the object does 
not control the subjective differentiation. In the material 
sciences the subject is obliged to incline himself as far as 
possible from his psychical centre to the object, and this 
accounts for the fact that here all subjects present that 
side only, which is almost one and the same with all. As 
soon, however, as in aesthetic observation, as the subject re- 
sumes his active role, the subjective inequality and differ- 
ence return at once, as is seen in the fine arts of painting 
and music. In the spiritual sciences the opposite takes 
place. Here the object is not physical, but psychical, and 
where the physical still claims considerable attention, as 
in the study of language, it is of a secondary order, and 
the psychical remains of first importance. As in the street, 
and especially in a foreign city, most people appear alike, 
and their differences of nature and character are seen only 
in their home life and in their drawing-rooms, so, in viewing 
the material world, all spirits ('^i^^aO show themselves one 
and the same ; but in the psychic centrum their differences 



Chap. II] § 46. FAITH 145 

of nature come to light. The peculiar character of the 
spiritual sciences consists in this, that they look on the life 
of the psyche in its own home and in its own calling, and 
therefore in the domain of these sciences the result of faith 
is often so entirely different in one than in the other. The 
same phenomenon in language will make different impres- 
sions upon a Mongolian and upon a Romanic linguist ; and 
a High Churchman will give an entirely different explanation 
of an event in English history from a partisan of the Old 
Covenanters. And if this subjective differentiation counts 
already for so much in Linguistics and in History, which have 
so strong a physical substratum in common, how much more 
powerful must be this influence of the subjective diversity, 
where psychology, morals, politics, economics, jurisprudence, 
etc., are in question. In these sciences almost everything 
depends upon the principles one starts out from, the meaning 
one attaches to words and the spiritual tendency by which 
one is governed. This subjective character of faith in these 
sciences is, therefore, no mistake, nor a defect, but a factor 
given of necessity in the nature of their object and their 
method. It is the essential condition (conditio sine qua non) 
by which alone these sciences can flourish. 

The second cause of this unlike working of faith in the 
spiritual domain lies in the fact, that faith here not only 
renders the formal service of establishing the relation be- 
tween the object and the self-conscious and thinking ego^ 
but also becomes the immediate voucher of the content. 
This is not the case in the material sciences, but it is in 
daily life. Our walking, our climbing of stairs, our eating 
and drinking, are not preceded by scientific investigation, 
but are effected by faith. You run downstairs without 
inquiring whether your feet will reach the steps, or whether 
the steps are able to bear your weight. You eat bread 
without investigating whether it may contain poison, etc. 
But when the material world is the object of scientific 
investigation, everything is measured, weighed, counted, 
separated and examined, and faith renders the exclusively 
formal service of making us believe in our senses, in the 



146 §47. RELIGION [Div. n 

reality of the phenomena, and in the axioms and laws of 
Logic by which we demonstrate. In the spiritual sciences, 
on the other hand, this is different. In Psychology it is faith, 
and faith alone, which directly guarantees to me the pres- 
ence of my soul, of my ego^ and of my sense of self. All 
the data by which I labor on psychical ground fall away 
immediately as soon as I consign faith to non-activity. 
And when I go out of myself, in order to communicate 
with other persons, in nine cases out of ten faith is the 
only means at command by which I can receive the revela- 
tion of their personality and attach a value to that reve- 
lation. Let it be emphatically repeated here, that only 
because my mother revealed to me who my father was, 
do I know this as a fact ; and in almost every case this 
all-important circumstance that affects my whole existence 
cannot be certified except by faith in the content of this 
revelation. This presents no difficulty as long as it con- 
cerns a content which touches me alone ; as soon, however, 
as this content acquires a general character, and tends to 
establish the laws of psychic life, in the domains of morals, 
politics, economics, pedagogy, jurisprudence and philosophy, 
we see all sorts of groups of individuals separate into schools, 
and nothing more is said of unity and common certainty. 

§ 47. Religion 

That which in the given sense is true of all science of the 
creaturely, and by which in the end everything depends upon 
faith^ is from the nature of the case still more eminently 
true of all scientific research which concerns itself with the 
matter of religion. Taking the conception of " religion " pro- 
visionally, without any more precise definition, this much is 
certain, that all religion assumes communion with something 
that transcends the cosmos, this cosmos being taken objec- 
tively as well as subjectively. Even when religion takes 
no higher flight than Ethics, it gropes about in that ethical 
world-order that it might find there a central ethical power 
which governs this whole domain, and before which every 
non-ethical phenomenon must vanish. As long as Ethics 



Chap. II] §47. KELIGION 147 

aims only at utility or eudemonism, it misses all religious 
character. Even with Kant this is the all-important point 
at which religion, however barren and abstract, enters into 
his ethical world. The ethical subject feels and recognizes 
a higher ethical will, to which his will must be subordi- 
nated. From which point of view, it follows of necessity 
that the whole world of phenomena is either reasoned out of 
existence as a mere semblance, or, as real, is subordinated to 
the ethical. But in whatever way it is interpreted, in any 
case the central power of the ethical world-order is made 
to be supreme, transcending all things else, and to it the 
subject not only subordinates himself, but also the object. 
With a somewhat higher religious development, however, 
this will not only not suffice, but there can be no rest until, 
surpassing the thelematic, this subordination of subject and 
object to this central power has also been found for one's 
consciousness. The object of religion is not only placed 
outside of this object-subject, but the subject as well as the 
object, and the relation of both, must find their ground and 
explanation in this central power. The psyche addresses 
itself not merely to the general in the special, and to the 
permanent in the transient, but to the cause (air la) ^ the 
beginning (icLp')(rj)^ the constitution (^o-varaai^), and end 
(^reXo^;) of both. This extra-cosmic and hyper-cosmic char- 
acter, however, of every central power, which in the higher 
sense shall be the object of religion, is the very reason that 
neither observation nor demonstration are of the least avail 
in establishing the tie between our subject and this central 
power, and that your reasoning understanding is as unable 
to foster as to exterminate religion. 

This is different, of course, with Theology, which as a 
science concerns itself with the matter of religion ; but the 
nature of this science, its method and its certainty, sustain 
the closest relation to the character of this central power, 
which is the impelling motive in all higher religion. As 
a physiological and physicocratic study can be for years made 
of the expressions of human life, without ever touching upon 
the study of the psyche, a lifetime can be spent in all sorts 



148 §47. RELIGION [Div. II 

of interesting studies of religious ideas, culture-forms, and 
usages, without ever touching upon the study of religion. 
Since we now have a psychology without pysche, we also hear 
a great deal said of a science of religion without religion. 
In which case all study remains phenomenal, but religion 
itself is not reached. Hence in this domain also, everything 
addresses itself to faith. If the subject were to construe his 
religion out of himself, religion itself would be destroyed. 
Its characteristic is that the subject places not only the 
cosmos outside of him, but primarily himself in absolute 
dependence upon the central power whose superiority he 
acknowledges. Consequently he can never place himself 
above this central power; this, however, is just what he 
would do, if he placed this power under himself as object of 
his investigation, or construed it out of himself. Much less 
can he construe this central power from the cosmos; for if 
the moral sense demands that we subordinate all that is 
cosmical to our ethical life, a fortiori this cosmical can never 
be adequate to the central power which dominates our ethical 
Avorld-order. By the study of phenomena, therefore, many 
definite ideas of religion may be derived from the subject 
and from the cosmos, but with all this there is nothing 
gained unless I have first grasped the heart of religion, of 
which the phenomenal is merely the outshining. 

Thus, what in the preceding section we found to be the 
case with respect to our relation to other subjects, repeats 
itself here with still greater emphasis. No sense, no percep- 
tion, and no knowledge is here possible for us, unless this 
central power reveals itself to us, affects us, and touches us 
inwardly in the centrum of our psyche. When we as man 
stand over against man, we are always able from our own 
subject to form our idea of the other subject, on the ground 
of faith in our common nature. But in religion this infer- 
ence fails us. Except, therefore, this central power makes 
itself felt by us, and with entire independence reveals itself 
to us in a way which bends to the form of our sense and of 
our consciousness, it has no existence for us, and religion is 
inconceivable. For this reason all those systems which try 



Chap. II] § 47. RELIGION 149 

to construe this central power ethically from the subject, or 
naturalistically from the object, fall short of religion and 
virtually deny it. Against all such efforts the words of the 
Psalmist are ever in force : " In thy light shall we see light," 
and also the words of Christ: "Neither doth any know the 
Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth 
to reveal Am." Presently your demonstration may have a 
place in your theological studies of the knowledge that is 
revealed, and in your inferences derived from it for the sub- 
ject and the cosmos; but observation or demonstration can 
never produce one single milligramme of religious gold. 
The entire gold-mine of religion lies in the self-revelation 
of this central power to the subject, and the subject has no 
other means thsin faith by which to appropriate to itself the 
gold from this mine. He who has no certainty in himself 
on the ground of this faith, about some point or other in 
religion, can never be made certain by demonstration or 
argument. In this way you may produce outward religious- 
ness, but never religion in the heart. 

It may even be asserted that faith obtains its absolute 
significance only in religion. In the cosmos you are sup- 
ported by observation, in the knowledge of other persons by 
your own human consciousness and in the self-knowledge of 
your own person by the self-consciousness of your ego. But 
nothing supports you here. Especially not as the cosmos 
now is, and as your subject now exists. In that cosmos, as 
well as in your subject, all manner of things oppose your 
religious sense; and between you and the object of your 
worship there is always the fathomless abyss of the "trans- 
ference into another genus " (/u-era^acrt? ek aWo 76^09), the 
transmutation of that which is not God into God. This 
cannot be explained more fully now, because we must not 
anticipate the character of Theology. But enough has been 
said to show convincingly that without faith no forward 
step can be taken here, and that therefore there can be no 
science of religion unless, by faith, the inquiring subject 
holds communion with that which is the supreme element 
in the nature of all religion. 



CHAPTER III 

THE TWOFOLD DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE 

§ 48. Two Kinds of People 

The certainty and unity of the scientific result, which, 
through the strong divergencies which exist in the thinking 
subject, and still more through the existence of the lie, al- 
most fell victims to Scepticism, recover considerable strength 
through the influence of wisdom and the support of faith. 
Since, however, as soon as it performs its function in the 
domain of the spiritual sciences, faith passes again under 
the dominion of the subjective divergencies, it can indeed 
promote the certainty of the result in the conviction, but 
it proves, rather than a help, an obstacle in the way to the 
unity of this result. The degree of certainty of one's own 
conviction cannot be raised without causing the antithesis 
with the scientific result of others to become proportionately 
striking. This is true of every spiritual science, in so far 
as its object is psychic ; but from the nature of the case this 
is most true of the science which has religion for the object 
of its investigation; because, here, the subjective-psychic 
must make a very important step, in order from one's own 
soul to reach the object of its worship. 

And yet these darker spots in the orb of science would 
prove no obstacle in the way to the unity of its radiance, 
if these divergencies in the subject limited themselves to 
a relative difference. Since, as was seen at the beginning 
of our study, the subject of science is not the individual, 
but the general subject of human nature, the potentially 
higher might at length of itself draw the potentially lower 
up to and along with itself, and in spite of much resistance 
and hesitation bring the universal human consciousness to a 
clear insight, a firm conviction, and a certain knowledge. 

150 



Chap. Ill] § 48. TWO KDs'DS OF PEOPLE 151 

In every domain of the expression of human life the sub- 
jective powers are unequal; not only in that of science, but 
also in those of art, religion, the development of social life, 
and business. In the spiritual domain, i.e. as soon as the 
powers of the consciousness and of the will turn the scale, 
equality is no longer found. Here endless variety is the rule. 
But in this multiformity there operates a law, w^hich makes 
a rule, and involuntarily causes the radically stronger and 
purer expressions to dominate the weaker. That w^hich 
takes place in song, takes place in the entire spiritual 
domain: the stronger and purer voice strikes the keynote, 
and ends by getting the others in tune with it. In the 
domain of the sciences, also, experience shows that, after 
much resistance and trial, the man of stronger and purer 
thought prevails at length over the men of weaker and less 
pure thought, convinces them, and compels them to think as he 
thinks, or at least to yield to the result of his thinking. Many 
convictions are now the common property of the universal 
human consciousness, which once were only entertained by 
individual thinkers. And when we come into touch with 
the thinking consciousness of Buddhists, of the followers 
of Confusius, or of Mohammedans, tto are in general so 
deeply conscious of our superiority, that it never occurs 
to us to ingratiate ourselves into their favor, but of itself 
and involuntarily, by our very contact with them, we make 
our conviction dominate them. When this does not succeed 
at once, this is exclusively because of their lesser suscepti- 
bility and backwardness ; as soon, however, as they begin to 
develop and to approach maturity, they readily conform to 
us. According to the rule ''' du choc des opinions jaillit 
la verite^^^ i.e. "truth is formed from clashing opinions," 
these provisional and necessary divergencies might be toler- 
ated with equanimity, in the firm conviction that from this 
multiplicity unity will spring, were only the character of 
these divergencies among men exclusively relative and 
matters of degree. 

But this naturally all falls away when you encounter a 
difference of principle^ and when you come to deal with 



152 § 48. TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE [Div. II 

two kinds of people, i.e. with those who part company 
because of a difference which does not find its origin 
within the circle of our human consciousness, but outside 
of it. And the Christian religion places before us just this 
supremely important fact. For it speaks of a regeneration 
(jraki'yyeveaCa)^ of a "being begotten anew" (ava^yevvrjai^')^ 
followed by an enlightening (^cfxoTLcrfio^^, which changes man 
in his very being; and that indeed by a change or transfor- 
mation which is effected by a supernatural cause. The ex- 
planation of this fact belongs properly to Dogmatics. But 
since this fact exerts an absolutely dominating influence upon 
our view of science, it would be a culpable blindfolding of 
self if we passed it by in silence. This " regeneration " breaks 
humanity in two, and repeals the unity of the human con- 
sciousness. If this fact of "being begotten anew," coming 
in from without, establishes a radical change in the being of 
man, be it only potentially, and if this change exercises at 
the same time an influence upon his consciousness, then as far 
as it has or has not undergone this transformation, there is an 
abyss in the universal human consciousness across which no 
bridge can be laid. It is with this as with wild fruit trees, 
part of which you graft, while the rest you leave alone. 
From the moment of that grafting, if successful and the 
trees are properly pruned, the growth of the two kinds of trees 
is entirely different, and this difference is not merely relative 
and a matter of degree, but specific. It is not a better and 
tenderer growth in one tree producing a richer fruit, while the 
other tree thrives less prosperously, and consequently bears 
poorer fruit ; but it is a difference in kind. However luxu- 
riantly and abundantly the ungrafted tree may leaf and 
blossom, it will 7iever bear the fruit which grows on the 
grafted tree. But however backward the grafted tree may 
be at first in its growth, the blossom which unfolds on its 
branches is fruit blossom. No tree grafts itself. The wild 
tree cannot change from its own kind into the kind of the 
grafted tree, unless a power which resides outside of the 
sphere of botany enters in and effects the renewal of the wild 
tree. This is no relative transition. A tree is not one- 



Chap. Ill] § 48. TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE 15B 

tenth cultivated and nine-tenths wild, so that by degrees it 
may become entirely cultivated; it is simply grafted or not 
grafted, and the entire result of its future growth depends 
on this fundamental difference. And though from the nature 
of the case this figure does not escape the weak side which 
every metaphor has, it will nevertheless serve its purpose. 
It illustrates the idea, that if in the orchard of humanity a 
similar operation or grafting takes place, by which the char- 
acter of the life-process of our human nature is potentially 
changed, a differentiation between man and man takes place 
which divides us into two hinds. And if the sublimate, 
which from our being arrays itself in our consciousness, 
may be compared to the blossom in which the tree develops 
its hidden beauty, then it follows that the consciousness of 
the grafted and the consciousness of the wo?z-grafted human- 
ity must be as unlike as to kind, as the blossom of the wild, 
and that of the true, vine. 

But the difficulty which we here encounter is, that every 
one grants this fact of grafting of trees, while in the world 
of men the parallel fact is denied by all who have not experi- 
enced it. This would be the case also with the trees, if 
they could think and speak. Without a doubt the wild 
vine would maintain itself to be the true vine, and look 
down upon that which announces itself as the true vine 
as the victim of imagination and presumption. The supe- 
riority of the cultivated branch would never be recognized 
by the wild branch; or, to quote the beautiful German 
words, the Wildling (weed) would ever claim to be Udelreis 
(noble plant). No, it is not strange that so far as they have 
not come into contact with this fact of palingenesis, thought- 
ful men should consider the assertion of it an illusion and a 
piece of fanaticism ; and that rather than deal with it as fact, 
they should apply their powers to prove its inconceivable- 
ness. This would not be so, if by some tension of human 
power the palingenesis proceeded from the sphere of our 
human life ; for then it would seem a thing to be desired, 
and all nobler efforts would be directed to it. But since 
palingenesis is effected by a power, the origin of which lies 



154 §48. TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE [Div. II 

outside of our human reach, so that man is passive under it 
as a tree under grafting, the human mind is not quickened 
by it to action, and consequently must array itself in opposi- 
tion to it. The dilemma is the more perplexing, since he 
who has been wrought upon by palingenesis can never con- 
vince of it him who has not been similarly wrought upon, 
because an action wrought upon us from without the human 
sphere, does not lend itself to analysis by our human con- 
sciousness; at least not so far as it concerns the common 
ground on which men with and without palingenesis can 
understand each other. They who are wrought upon by 
palingenesis can in no wise avoid, therefore, conveying the 
impression of being proud and of exalting themselves. The 
JEdelreis everywhere offends the Wildling^ not merely in that 
measure and sense in which a finely cultured, sesthetically 
developed person offends the uncouth parvenu; for with 
these the difference is a matter of degree, so that as a rule 
the parvenu envies the aristocrat, and so secretly recognizes 
his higher worth; but, and this is the fatality, the differ- 
ence in hand is and always will be one of principle. The 
Wildling also grows and blooms, and as a rule its foliage is 
more luxuriant, while in its specific development the Edelreis 
is not seldom backward. 

We speak none too emphatically, therefore, when we 
speak of two kinds of people. Both are human, but one is 
inwardly different from the other, and consequently feels a 
different content rising from his consciousness; thus they 
face the cosmos from different points of view, and are 
impelled by different impulses. And the fact that there are 
two kinds of people occasions of necessity the fact of two 
kinds of human life and consciousness of life, and of two 
kinds of science ; for which reason the idea of the unity of 
science^ taken in its absolute sense, implies the denial of the 
fact of palingenesis, and therefore from principle leads to the 
rejection of the Christian religion. 



Chap. Ill] §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 155 

§ 49. Two Kinds of Science 

By two kinds of science we do not mean that two radi- 
cally different representations of the cosmos can be simul- 
taneously entertained side by side, with equal right. Truth 
is one, and so far as you understand it to be the object re- 
flected in our human consciousness, science also can only be 
one. Thus if you understand science to be the systematized 
result of your perception, observation and thought, the dif- 
ference in the result of your investigation may be a matter 
of degree but cannot be radical. If the result of A is con- 
trary to the result of B, one or both have strayed from the path 
of science, but in no case can the two results, simultaneously 
and with equal right, be true. But our speaking of two kinds 
of science does not mean this. What we mean is, that both 
parts of humanity, that which has been wrought upon by 
palingenesis and that which lacks it, feel the impulse to in- 
vestigate the object, and, by doing this in a scientific way, to 
obtain a scientific systemization of that which exists. The 
effort and activity of both bear the same character ; they 
are both impelled by the same purpose ; both devote their 
strength to the same kind of labor ; and this kind of labor is 
in each case called the prosecution of science. But however 
much they may be doing the same thing formally, their activ- 
ities run in opposite directions, because they have different 
starting-points ; and because of the difference in their nature 
they apply themselves differently to this work, and view 
things in a different way. Because they themselves are dif- 
erently constituted, they see a corresponding difference in the 
constitution of all things. They are not at work, therefore, 
on different parts of the same house, but each builds a house 
of his own. Not as if an existing plan, convention or de- 
liberation here assigned the rule. This happens as little. 
in one circle as in the other. Generation upon generation, 
in all ages, in different lands, and among all classes of 
people, is at work on this house of science, without concert 
and without an architectural plan, and it is a mysterious 
power by which, from all this sporadic labor, a whole is per- 



156 § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCP: [Div. II 

fected. Each one places his brick in the walls of this build- 
ing, and always where it belongs, without himself knowing 
or planning it. But despite the absence of all architectural 
insight the building goes on, and the house is in process of 
erection, even though it may never be entirely completed. 
And both are doing it, they who have been wrought upon 
by palingenesis, as well as those who have remained un- 
changed. All this study, in the circle of the one as well as 
in that of the other, founds, builds and assists in the con- 
struction of a whole. But we emphatically assert that these 
two kinds of people devote their time and their strength to 
the erection of two different structures, each of which pur- 
poses to be a complete building of science. If, however, 
one of these two is asked, whether the building, on which he 
labors, will truly provide us what we need in the scientific 
realm, he will of course claim for himself the high and noble 
name of science, and withhold it from the other. 

This cannot be otherwise, for if one acknowledged the 
other to be truly scientific, he would be obliged to adopt the 
other man's views. You cannot declare a thing to be scien- 
tific gold, and then reject it. You derive your right to 
reject a thing only from your conviction that that something 
is not true, while a conviction that it is true would compel you 
to accept it. These two streams of science, therefore, which 
run in separate river-beds, do not in the least destroy the 
principle of the unity of science. This cannot be done ; it 
is absolutely inconceivable. We only affirm that formally 
both groups perform scientific labor, and that they recognize 
each other's scientific character, in the same way in which 
two armies facing each other are mutually able to appreciate 
military honor and military worth. But w^hen they have 
arrived at their result they cannot conceal the fact that in 
many respects these results are contrary to each other, and 
are entirely different ; and as far as this is the case, each 
group naturally contradicts whatever the other group asserts. 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 167 

This would have revealed itself clearly and at once, at least 
in Christian lands, if from the beginning the development of 
each group had proceeded entirely within well-defined boun- 
daries. But this was not the case, neither could it be. First, 
because there is a. very broad realm of investigation in which 
the difference between the two groups exerts no influence. 
For in the present dispensation palingenesis works no change 
in the senses, nor in the plastic conception of visible things. 
The entire domain of the more primary observation, which 
limits itself to weights, measures and numbers, is common 
to both. The entire empiric investigation of the things that 
are perceptible to our senses (simple or reinforced) has noth- 
ing to do with the radical difference which separates the two 
groups. By this we do not mean, that the natural sciences as 
such and in their entirety, fall outside of this difference, but 
only that in these sciences the difference which separates the 
two groups exerts no influence on the beginnings of the inves- 
tigation. Whether a thing weighs two milligrams or three, 
can be absolutely ascertained by every one that can weigh. 
If it be mistakenly supposed that the natural sciences are 
entirely exhausted in this first and lowest part of their inves- 
tigation, the entirely unjust conclusion may be reached, that 
these sciences, as such, fall outside of the difference. But in- 
accurate as this would be, it would be equally unfair, for the 
sake of accentuating the difference, to deny the absolute char- 
acter of perception by the senses. Any one who in the realm 
of visible things has observed and formulated something with 
entire accuracy, whatever it be, has rendered service to both 
groups. To the validity of these formulas, which makes 
them binding upon all and for all time, the natural sciences 
owe their reputation of certainty, and, since we are deeply 
interested practically in the dominion over matter, also their 
honor and overestimation. For the more accurate state- 
ment of our idea we cannot fail to remark that, however 
rich these formulas and the dominion over nature which they 
place at our disposal may be in their practical results, they 
stand, nevertheless, entirely at the foot of the ladder of sci- 
entific investigation, and are so little scientific in their char- 



158 § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

acter, that formally they are to be equated with the knowledge 
of the farmer, who has learned how land must be tilled, and 
how cattle may be bred to advantage. Observation in the 
laboratory is certainly much finer, and the labor of thought 
much more exhaustive, and the skill of invention much more 
worthy of admiration, but this is a distinction in degree ; the 
empiric knowledge of the farmer and the empiric knowledge 
of our naturalist in principle are one. If, however, it is 
important to reduce to its just equality the significance of 
that which, in the results of naturalistic studies, is absolutely 
certain, it should be gratefully acknowledged that in the 
elementary parts of these studies there is a co7Rm.on realm, 
in which the difference between view- and starting-point 
does not enforce itself. 

Not only in the natural, but in the spiritual sciences 
also, a common realm presents itself. The mixed psychic- 
somatic nature of man accounts for this. Consequently, 
the object of the spiritual sciences inclines also, to a cer- 
tain extent, to express itself in the somatic. Only think 
of the log OS ^ which, being psychic in nature, creates a body 
for itself in language. Hence in the spiritual sciences the 
investigation is partly comprised of the statement of out- 
wardly observable facts. Such is the case in History^ the 
skeleton of which, if we may so express it, consists entirely 
of events and facts, the accurate narration of which must 
rest upon the investigation of all sorts of palpable docu- 
ments. It is the same with the study of Language^ whose 
first task it is to determine sounds, words and forms in their 
constituent parts and historic development, from all manner 
of information and observation obtained by eye and ear. 
This is the case with nearly every spiritual science, in part 
even with psychology itself, which has its physiological 
side. To a certain extent, all these investigations are in 
line with the lower natural sciences. To examine archives, 
to unearth monuments, to decipher what at first seemed un- 
intelligible and translate it into your own language ; to catch 
forms of language from the mouth of a people and to trace 
those forms in their development ; and in like manner to 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 159 

espy the relation among certain actions of our senses and 
the psychic reactions which follow, etc., are altogether activ- 
ities which in a sense bear an objective character, and are 
but little dominated by the influence of what is individual 
in the investigating subject. This should not be granted too 
absolutely, and the determination whether an objective docu- 
ment is genuine or not, or whether the contents of it must be 
translated thus or so, is in many cases not susceptible to 
such an absolute decision. But provided the study of the 
objective side of the spiritual sciences does not behave itself 
unseemly and contents itself within its boundaries, it claims 
our joyful recognition, that here also a broad realm of study 
opens itself, the results of which are benefits to both groups 
of thinkers, and thus also to the two kinds of science. 



This must be emphasized, because it is in the interest of 
science at large, that mutual benefit be derived by both cir- 
cles from what is contributed to the general stock of sci- 
ence. What has been well done by one need not be done 
again by you. It is at the same time important that, though 
not hesitating to part company as soon as principle demands 
it, the two kinds of science shall be as long as possible con- 
scious of the fact that, formally at least, both are at work at 
a common task. It is with reference to this that to the two 
already mentioned common realms a third one should be 
added, which is no less important. The formal process of 
thought has not been attacked by sin, and for this reason 
palingenesis works no change in this mental task. 

There is but one logic, and not two. If this simply im- 
plied, that logic properly so called as a subdivision of the 
philosophical or psychological sciences, does not need to be 
studied in a twofold way, the benefit would be small ; the 
more because this is true to a certain extent only, and be- 
cause all manner of differences and antitheses present them- 
selves at once in the methodological investigation. But the 
influence of the fact aforementioned extends much farther, 
and contributes in two ways important service in main- 



160 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

taining a certain mutual contact between the two kinds of 
science. In the first place, from this fact it follows that the 
accuracy of one another's demonstrations can be critically ex- 
amined and verified, in so far at least as the result strictly 
depends upon the deduction made. By keeping a sharp 
watch upon each other, mutual service is rendered in the 
discovery of logical faults in each other's demonstrations, and 
thus in a formal way each will continually watch over the 
other. And, on the other hand, they may compel each other 
to justify their points of view over against one another. 

Let not this last be misunderstood. If, as we remarked, 
palingenesis occasions one group of men to exist differently 
from the other, every effort to understand each other will 
be futile in those points of the investigation in which this 
difference comes into play; and it will be impossible to settle 
the difference of insight. No polemics between these two 
kinds of science, on details which do not concern the state- 
ment of an objectively observable fact, or the somatic side of 
the psychical sciences, or, finally, a logical fault in argumenta- 
tion, can ever serve any purpose. This is the reason why, as 
soon as it has allowed itself to be inveigled into details, and 
has undertaken to deal with things that are not palpable phe- 
nomena or logical mistakes. Apologetics has always failed to 
reach results, and has weakened rather than strengthened the 
reasoner. But just because, so soon as the lines have diverged 
but a little the divergency cannot be bridged over, it is so 
much the more important that sharp and constant attention 
be fixed upon the junction where the two lines begin to di- 
verge. For though it is well known beforehand that even at 
this point of intersection no agreement can be reached ; for 
then no divergence would follow; yet at this point of intersec- 
tion it can be explained to each other what it is that compels 
us, from this point of intersection, to draw our line as we do. 
If we neglect to do this, pride and self-conceit will come into 
play, and our only concession to our scientific opponent will 
be the mockery of a laugh. Because he does not walk in our 
footsteps we dispute not only the accuracy of his results, 
but also formally deny the scientific character of his work. 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 161 

And this is not right. Every tendency that wants to main- 
tain itself as a scientific tendency, must at least give an 
account of the reason why, from this point of intersection, it 
moves in one and not in the other direction. 

And though nothing be accomplished by this, beyond the 
confession of the reason why one refuses to follow the ten- 
dency of the other, even this is an infinite gain. On the one 
hand it prevents the self-sufficiency which avoids all inves- 
tigation into the deepest grounds, and lives by the theory 
that "the Will stands in place of reason." Thus we feel 
ourselves bound, not only to continue our studies formally 
in a severely scientific way, but also to give ourselves an 
increasingly clear account of the good and virtuous right 
by which we maintain the position originally taken, and 
by which we formally labor as we do. And since among 
congenial spirits one is so ready to accept, as already 
well defined, what is still wanting in the construction, 
the two tendencies render this mutual service ; viz. that 
they necessitate the continuance of the investigation into 
the very soil in which the foundation lies. But, on the 
other hand also, this practice of giving each other an account 
at the point of intersection effects this very great gain, that 
as scientists we do not simply walk independently side by 
side, but that we remain together in logical fellowship, and 
together pay our homage to the claim of science as such. 
This prevents the useless plying of polemics touching points 
of detail, which so readily gives rise to bitterness of feel- 
ing, and concentrates the heat of battle against those issues 
of our consciousness which determine the entire process of 
the life of science. However plainly and candidly we may 
speak thus of a twofold science, and however much we may 
be persuaded that the scientific investigation can be brought 
to a dose in no single department by all scientists together, 
yea, cannot be coiitiniied in concert, as soon as palingenesis 
makes a division between the investigators ; we are equally 
emphatic in our confession, which we do not make in spite 
of ourselves, but with gladness, that in almost every depart- 
ment there is some task that is common to all, and, what is 



162 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

almost of greater importance still, a clear account can be 
given of both starting-points. 



If this explains why these two kinds of science have re- 
mained for the most part interlaced, there is still another 
and no less important cause, which has prevented their 
clearer separation. It is the slow process which must 
ensue before any activity can develop itself from what po- 
tentially is given in palingenesis. If palingenesis operated 
immediately from the centrum of our inner life to the outer- 
most circumference of our being and consciousness, the antith- 
esis between the science which lives by it and that which de- 
nies it, would be at once absolute in every subject. But such 
is not the case. The illustration of the grafting is still in 
point. The cultivated shoot which is grafted into the wild 
tree is at first very small and weak ; the wild tree, on the 
other hand, after being grafted, will persist in putting forth 
its branches ; and it is only by the careful pruning away of 
wild shoots that the vitality from the roots is compelled to 
withdraw its service from the wild trunk and transfer it to 
the cultivated shoot. Later on this progress is secured, till 
at length the cultivated shoot obtains the entire upper hand 
and the wild tree scarcely puts out another branch ; but this 
takes sometimes seven or more years. You observe a similar 
phenomenon in palingenesis, even to such an extent that if 
the development begun upon earth were not destined to reach 
completion in a higher life, the sufficient reason of the entire 
fact could scarcely be conceived, especially not in those cases 
where this palingenesis does not come until later life. But 
even when in the strength of youth palingenesis leads to re- 
pentance (transformation of the consciousness), and to con- 
version (change in life-expression), the growth of the wild 
tree is by no means yet cut off, neither is the shoot of the cul- 
tivated branch at once completed. 

This is never claimed in the circles that make profes- 
sion of this palingenesis. It has been questioned among 
themselves whether the entire triumph of the new element is 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 163 

possible on this side of the grave (Perfectionists), but that 
in any case a period of transition and conflict must precede 
this completeness has been the experience and common confes- 
sion of all. If we call to mind the facts that those people who 
as a sect proclaim this Perfectionism, are theologically almost 
without any development, and soon prove that they reach 
their singular conclusions by a legal Pelagian interpretation 
of sin and a mystical interpretation of virtue, while the 
theologians in the church of Rome who defend this position 
consider such an early completion a very rare exception, it 
follows, that as far as it concerns our subject this Perfec- 
tionism claims no consideration. These sectarian zealots 
have nothing to do with science, and those who have been 
canonized are too few in number to exert an influence upon 
the progress of scientific development. Actually, therefore, 
we here deal with a process of palingenesis which operates 
continually, but which does not lead to an immediate cessa- 
tion of the preceding development, nor to a sufficiently 
powerful unfolding at once of the new development; and 
as a necessary result the scientific account, given in the 
consciousness, cannot at once effect a radical and a clearly 
conscious separation. 



Several causes, moreover, have assisted the long con- 
tinuance of this intimate relation. First the fundamental 
conceptions, which have been the starting-points of the two 
groups of scientists, were for many centuries governed alto- 
gether by Special Revelation. Not only those who shared the 
palingenesis, but also those who remained without it, for a 
long time started out from the existence of God, the creation 
of the world, the creation of man as sui generis, the fall, etc. 
A few might have expressed some doubt concerning one 
thing and another ; a very few might have ventured to deny 
them ; but for many centuries the common consciousness 
rested in these fixed conceptions. 

Properly, then, one cannot say that any reaction took 
place before the Humanists ; and the forming of a common 



164 § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

opinion upon the basis of Pantheism and Naturalism has 
really only begun since the last century. Since, now, those 
who lived by palingenesis found these old representations 
to conform entirely to their own consciousness, it is nat- 
ural that they were not on the alert to build a scientific 
house of their own, as long as general science also lived by 
premises which properly belonged to palingenesis. Now, 
however, all this has entirely changed. They who stand 
outside the palingenesis have perceived, with increasing 
clearness, that these primordial conceptions as premises 
belonged not to them but to their opponents, and in a com- 
paratively short time they have placed an entirely different 
range of premises over against them. Creation has made 
room for Evolution, and with surprising rapidity vast multi- 
tudes have made this transition from creation to evolution, 
because, in fact, they never have believed in creation, or 
because they had, at least, never assimilated the world of 
thoughts which this word Creation embraced. As natural 
as it has been, therefore, that in the domain of science 
both circles have been one thus far, it is equally natural 
that the unity of this company should now be irreparably 
broken. He who in building upon the foundation of crea- 
tion thinks that he builds the same wall as another who 
starts from evolution, reminds one of Sisyphus. No sooner 
has the stone been carried up than relentlessly it rolls back 
again. 

A second cause in point, lies in the fact that palingenesis 
does not primarily impel to scientific labor. It stands too 
high for this, and is of too noble an origin. Let us be sober, 
and awake from the intoxication of those who have become 
drunk on the wine of science. If you except a small aris- 
tocracy, the impulse to the greater part of scientific study 
lies in the ambition to dominate the material and visible 
world; to satisfy a certain intellectual tendency of the mind ; 
to secure a position in life ; to make a name and to harvest 
honors ; and to look down with a sense of superiority upon 
those w^ho are less broadly developed. Mention only the 
name of Jesus Christ, and you perceive at once how this 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 165 

entire scientific interest must relinquish its claim to occupy 
the first place in our estimate of life. Jesus never wrote 
a Summa like Thomas Aquinas, nor a Kritik der reinen 
Vernunft like Kant, but even in the circles of the naturalists 
his holy name sounds high above the names of all these 
coryphaei of science. 

There is thus something else to make a man great, and 
this lies outside of science in its concrete and technical sense. 
There is a human development and expression of life which 
does not operate within the domain of science, but which, 
nevertheless, stands much higher. There is an adoration 
and a self-abasement before God, a love and a self-denial be- 
fore our fellow-men, a growth in what is pure and heroic and 
formative of character, which far excels all beauty of science. 
Bound as it is to the consciousness-forms of our present 
existence, it is highly improbable that science will be of 
profit to us in our eternal existence ; but this we know, 
that as certainly as there is a spark of holy love aglow in 
our hearts, this spark cannot be extinguished, and the 
breath of eternity alone can kindle it into the brightest 
flame. And experience teaches that the new life which 
springs from palingenesis, is much more inclined to move in 
this nobler direction than to thirst after science. This may 
become a defect, and has often degenerated into such, and 
thus has resulted in a dislike or disdain for science. The 
history of Mysticism has its tales to relate, and Methodism 
comes in for its share. But as long as there is no disdain of 
science, but merely a choice of the nobler interest, it is but 
natural that the life of palingenesis should prefer to seek 
its greatness in that which exalts so highly the name 
of Jesus, and feels itself less attracted to the things which 
brought Kant and Darwin their world-wide fame. Add to 
this fact that for most people the life of science depends 
upon the possibility of obtaining a professorship or a lecture- 
ship, and that in Europe they who have these positions to 
dispose of are, as a rule, inclined to exclude the sons of 
palingenesis from such appointments, and you see at once 
how relatively small the number among them must have 



166 § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

been who were able to devote themselves, with all the energy 
of their lives, to the study of the sciences. And thus their 
strength was too small and their numbers too few to assume a 
position of their own, and to prosecute science independently 
from their own point of view. 



One more remark will bring to a close the explanation of 
this phenomenon. One may have a scientific mind, and be 
able to make important contributions to the scientific result, 
and yet not choose the most fundamental principles of life as 
the subject of his study. There is a broad field of detail- 
study in which laurels can be won, without penetrating to 
the deep antitheses of the two world-views whose position 
over against each other becomes ever more and more clearly 
defined. In this class of studies success is won with less 
talent, with less power of thought, with less sacrifice of 
time and toil ; one also works with greater certainty ; more 
immediate results are attained ; and more questions of an 
historical character are presented which can be solved within 
a more limited horizon. This accounts for the fact that of 
ten scientists, nine will prefer this class of studies. Theolo- 
gians are the exception, but their position at the univer- 
sities is uncommon. One tolerates in them what would not 
be tolerated in others, and a gulf between the theological and 
the other faculties is tacitly acquiesced in. If these faculties 
of theology were not an imperative necessity because of the 
churches, at most universities they would simply be abol- 
ished. With the reasonable exception of these, the ratio of 
one to nine, assumed above, between the men of detail-study 
and the men of the study of principles, is certainly a fair 
one ; and thus when applied to the few sons of palingenesis 
who have devoted themselves to science and have been ap- 
pointed to official positions, causes the number of the stu- 
dents of principles among them to be reduced to such a 
minimum, that an independent and a clearly defined attitude 
on their part has been fairly impossible. 

Practically and academically the separation between these 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 167 

two kinds of science lias thus far been made only in a 
few single points. The universities of Brussels and Lou- 
vain are examples of this. In Amsterdam and Freiburg, 
also, a life peculiar to itself has originated. And in Amer- 
ica a certain division has begun. But these divisions bear 
too much a churchly or anti-churchly character, and for the 
greater "republic of letters" as a whole they are scarcely 
yet worthy of mention. Almost everywhere the two stems 
are still intertwined, and in almost every way the stem which 
grows from palingenesis is still altogether repressed and 
overshadowed by the stem of naturalism ; naturalism being 
here taken as the expression of life, which, without palin- 
genesis, flourishes as it originated. There was, indeed, a 
conservative period in university life, in which the old 
world-view still thought itself able, by an angry look or 
by persecution, to exorcise the coming storm ; and a later 
period in which by all manner of half concessions and weak 
apologetics, it tried to repress the rise of the naturalistic 
tendency. But this Conservatism, which first tried compul- 
sion and then persuasion, owed its origin least of all to 
palingenesis, and thus lacked a spiritual root. At present, 
therefore, it is rapidly passing away. Its apologetics lack 
force. It seeks so to comport itself that by the grace of 
Naturalism it may still be only tolerated ; and it deems it no 
disgrace to skulk in a musty vault of the fortification in 
which once it bore command. 

Neither the tardiness, however, of the establishment of 
this bifurcation of science, nor the futile effort of Conserva- 
tism to prolong its existence, can resist the continuous 
separation of these two kinds of science. The all-decisive 
question here is whether there are two points of departure. 
If this is not the case, then unity must be maintained by 
means of the stronger mastering the weaker ; but if there 
are two points of departure, then the claim of two kinds of 
science in the indicated sense remains indisputably valid, 
entirely apart from the question whether both will succeed 
in developing themselves for any good result within a given 
time. This twofold point of departure is certainly given by 



168 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

palingenesis. This would not be true if the deepest founda- 
tions of our knowledge lay outside of us and not in us, or 
if the palingenesis operated outside of these principia of 
knowledge in the subject. Since, however, this is not the 
case, because, like sin, whose result it potentially destroys, 
palingenesis causes the subject to be different in his inner- 
most self from what he was before ; and because this disposi- 
tion of the subject exercises an immediate influence upon 
scientific investigation and our scientific conviction ; these 
two unlike magnitudes can have no like result, and from 
this difference between the two circles of subjects there fol- 
lows of necessity difference between their science. 

This bifurcation must extend as far as the influence of 
those subjective factors which palingenesis causes to be dif- 
ferent in one than in the other. Hence all scientific research 
which has things seen only as object, or which is prosecuted 
simply by those subjective factors which have undergone no 
change, remains the same for both. Near the ground the tree 
of science is one for all. But no sooner has it reached a cer- 
tain height, than two branches separate, in the same way 
as may be seen in a tree which is grafted on the right side, 
while on the left side there is allowed to grow a shoot from 
the wild root. In its lowest parts the tree is one, but at a 
given height it divides itself, and in this twofold develop- 
ment one branch grows side by side with the other. Which 
of these two is to be considered the wild development, is to 
be accounted as failing of its end and to be cut away, and 
which the truer development of the tree that shall bear fruit, 
cannot be decided by one for the other. The negative for 
the one determines here the positive for the other. This, 
however, is the same for both, and the choice of each is not 
governed by the results of discursive thought, but exclusivel}^ 
by the deepest impulse of the life-consciousness of each. If 
in that deepest impulse the one were like the other, the 
choice would be the same. That it is different, is simply 
because they are constitutionally different. 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 169 

Meanwhile, it must not be concluded from this that in the 
circle of palingenesis scientific development must be uniform, 
in the sense that all, who in this circle devote themselves to 
science, must conform to a given model and arrive at harmo- 
nious results. This representation is not infrequently made 
by the other side. Naturalistic science decorates itself with 
corn-flower and garden-rue, as symbols of the free character 
which it boasts, while the science of those who accept palin- 
genesis is represented as festQoned with autumn-leaves (f euille- 
morte), and as incapable of progress worthy of the name within 
the narrow limits to which it is confined. This entire repre- 
sentation, however, is but a play of the imagination, and in 
both circles a real scientific development takes place, which un- 
folds the beauty of truth only in the harmony of multiformity. 

A fuller explanation may be considered important. 

In the abstract every one concedes that the subjective 
assimilation of the truth concerning the object cannot be 
the same with all, because the investigating individuals are 
not as alike as drops of water, but as unlike as blades of 
grass and leaves on a tree. That a science should be free 
from the influence of the subjective factor is inconceivable, 
hence with the unlikeness of the individuals the influence 
of this factor must appear. 

For this reason science in its absolute sense is the property 
of no single individual. The universal human consciousness 
in its richest unfoldings is and ever will be the subject of 
science, and individuals in their circle and age can never 
be anything but sharers of a small division of science in 
a given form and seen in a given light. The difference 
among these individuals is accordingly both a matter of 
degree and of kind. A matter of degree in so far as energy 
in investigation, critical perspicuity and power of thought 
are stronger in one than in the other. But a matter of 
kind also, in so far as temperament, personal inclination, 
position in life and the favorableness or unfavorableness of 
circumstances cause each individual investigator to become 
one-sided, and make him find his strength in that one-sided- 
ness which renders the supplementation and the criticism 



170 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

of others a necessity. This accounts for the varieties of 
theories and schools which antagonize, and by this antag- 
onism bless, each other. This is the reason why in each age 
and circle certain views prevail, and strike the keynote ; 
and that all manner of personal influences are restricted 
by the power of public opinion. This piecemeal labor 
of every description would never advance science, if the 
object of science itself did not exist organically, and the 
investigating individuals in every land and age were not 
involuntarily and often unconsciously organically related. 
To annul this mutually supplementary, corrective and yet 
organically connected multiformity, would be the death of 
science. Not the military mechanism of the army, but the 
organic multiformity of social life is the type to which, in 
order to flourish, science must correspond. 

Such being the case with naturalistic science, it would be 
different with the science which flourishes upon the root of 
palingenesis, only if palingenesis annulled the cause of this 
subjective pluriformity. This, however, is not at all the case. 
Palingenesis does not destroy the difference in degree between 
individuals. It does not alter the differences of tempera- 
ment, of personal disposition, of position in life, nor of con- 
comitant circumstances which dominate the investigation. 
Neither does palingenesis take away the differences born 
from the distinction of national character and the process 
of time. Palingenesis may bring it about, that these dif- 
ferences assume another character, that in some forms they 
do not appear, and that they do appear in other forms 
■unknown outside of it ; but in every case with palingenesis 
also subjective divergence continues to exist in every way. 
The result indeed shows that in this domain, as well as 
in that of naturalistic science, different schools have formed 
themselves, and that even in the days of the Middle Ages 
there never was a question of uniformity. However much 
Rome has insisted upon uniformity, it has never been able 
to establish it, and in the end she has adopted the system of 
giving to each expression of the multiformity a place in the 
organic harmony of her great hierarchy. 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 171 

No doubt the antitheses sometimes assume an entirely dif- 
ferent character in the domain of palingenesis than in the 
domain of naturalistic science. No atheistic, materialistic, 
nor pessimistic system can flourish in its soil. Its schools, 
therefore, bear different names and divide themselves after 
different standards. But as after the entrance of the Chris- 
tian religion into the world, the schools of Alexandria, of 
Antioch, of North Africa, of Constantinople, and of Rome, 
each bore a type of its own, so it has remained through all 
the ages, is now, and shall be to the end. Friction, fermen- 
tation and conflict are the hall-mark of every expression of 
life on higher ground in this present dispensation, and from 
this the science of the palingenesis also effects no escape. 



Three objections may here be raised : (1) that this 
science is bound to the content of revelation ; (2) that its 
liberty is impeded by the ecclesiastical placet ; and (3) that 
its result is determined in advance. A brief remark is in 
place on each of these three objections. 

Since the investigating subject is changed by palingenesis 
from what he was before, he will undoubtedly assume a 
different attitude towards the Revelation of God. He will 
no longer try, as in his naturalistic period, to denounce that 
Revelation as a vexatious hindrance, but will feel the need 
of it, will live in it, and profit by it. He will certainly thus 
reckon with that Revelation, but in no other way than that 
in which the naturalist is bound to and must reckon with the 
existing cosmos. This, however, would destroy the scientific 
character of his knowledge, only if this Revelation consisted 
of nothing but a list of conclusions, and if he were not allowed 
subjectively to assimilate these conclusions. This, however, 
is by no means the case. The Revelation offered us in the 
Word of God gives us gold in the mine, and imposes upon us 
the obligation of mining it ; and what is mined is of such a 
nature, that the subject as soon as he has been changed by 
palingenesis, assimilates it in his own way, and brings it in 
relation to the deepest impulse and entire inner disposition 



172 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

of his being. That this assimilation does not take place by 
means of the understanding only, can raise no objection, since 
it has been shown that naturalistic science also can make no 
advances without faith. Moreover, naturalistic science, as 
well as that of palingenesis, has its bounds, beyond which it 
cannot go; its antinomies, which it cannot reconcile; and its 
mysteries, after which the interrogation point remains stand- 
ing. If now knowledge is brought us by Revelation from 
across the boundaries, a reconciliation is offered for many 
antinomies, and many a new mystery is unveiled, it pleads 
in no respect against the scientific character of our science, 
that our reason is unable to analyze this new material and 
to place it in organic connection with the rest. It is not 
strange, therefore, that with reference to this Revelation, 
faith unfolds a broader activity than in the investigation 
of the cosmos, and harmonizes entirely with the aim and 
character of this Revelation : viz. to be of service first to 
the practical religious life, even of the simplest-minded 
people, and after that to science. But rather than protest 
against this, science ought to recognize the fact that she is 
called, (1) to investigate the nature and essence of this Reve- 
lation; (2) to analyze the material, which has been derived 
from it ; and (3) to discover and indicate the way in which 
this material, as well as Revelation itself, enters into relation 
with the psychical life of man. The lack of unanimity on 
any of these three points, and that in all ages these three 
points, and everything connected with them, have been so 
differently judged, is readily explained. The tendencies of 
mysticism and pietism, of realism and spiritualism, of trans- 
cendentalism and immanence, of monism and dualism, of the 
organic and individualism have ever intruded themselves 
into these questions, and have crossed again those blended 
types, which are known by the name of Romanism, Luther- 
anism and Calvinism. Tendencies and types these, in which 
shortsightedness beholds merely ecclesiastical variegations, 
but which to the man of broader view, extend themselves 
across the entire domain of human life, science included. 
And though the science of the palingenesis may succeed as 



CiiAi'. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 173 

little as naturalistic science in scientifically bringing to a suc- 
cessful end the conflict between these different schools and 
tendencies on its own ground, it is still the task of science 
also within the realm of palingenesis constantly to test the 
assertions of these several tendencies, for the sake of en- 
hancing the clearness of their self- consciousness. 

This brings us of itself to the second objection : that the 
liberty of this science is impeded by the ecclesiastical placet. 
This also must be denied. There is no instituted church 
(ecclesia instituta) conceivable without a placet; and the 
position of an investigator, whose results antagonize this ec- 
clesiastical placet^ is thereby rendered false and untenable ; 
but this does not impede the prosecution of science in the 
least. In the first place the church, as instituted church, 
never passes sentence upon that which has no bearing upon 
"saving faith." Even the church of Rome, which goes far- 
thest in this respect, leaves the greater part of the object 
free. Again, this church placet is itself the result of a spir- 
itual conflict, which was developed by contradictions, and in 
which the controversy was scientific on both sides. Hence 
it is every man's duty and calling constantly to test by sci- 
entific methods the grounds advanced from either side. And 
if, in the third place, an investigator becomes convinced that 
the placet of the church is an unjust inference from Revela- 
tion, he must try to prove this to his church, and if she will 
not allow him this privilege, he must leave her. This would 
not be possible if the church were a scientific institute, 
but no instituted church advances this claim. Hence in the 
realm of palingenesis one remains a man of science, even 
though he may lose his harmony with the church of his birth ; 
and it is not science, but honesty and the sense of morality, 
which in such a case compels a man to break with his church. 
This, however, occurs but rarely, partly because the churches 
in general allow considerable latitude ; partly because a false 
position does not seem untenable to many ; but more 
especially, because the churchly types are not arbitrarily 
chosen, but of necessity have risen from the constellation of 
life. Since the scientific investigator, who is connected with 



174 §49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

such a church, stands for the most part under those same 
constellations, it is very natural that in most cases he will 
not come into any such conflict, but will arrive at the same 
conclusions as his church. Then, however, there is no com- 
pulsion ; no bonds are employed ; but the agreement is 
unconstrained and necessary. The danger would be more 
serious, if the whole church in the earth had only one form 
alike for all parts of the world, so that the placet would be 
everywhere the same ; and indeed the existence of this dan- 
ger of the loss of liberty could not entirely be denied dur- 
ing the Middle Ages, nor can it be denied to-day in those 
countries which are entirely uniform religiously. But since 
in the instituted church this unity is broken, so that now 
there are ten or more forms of church organizations, in which 
almost every possible type has come to an organization of its 
own, it is almost inconceivable that in the domain of palin- 
genesis a scientific investigation would ever lead to a result 
which would not accord with the placet of one of these 
churches on the contested points. And if, in case a conflict 
cannot be avoided, one is impelled by love of truth and by 
a sense of honor to change his relations from one church to 
the other, it is as little of a hindrance to the liberty of the 
spiritual sciences, as when one is compelled by the results of 
investigation on political grounds to seek refuge from Russia 
in freer England or America. 

Finally, concerning the last objection, — that in the do- 
main of palingenesis there can be no science, because its 
results are predetermined^ — let it be said that this is partly 
inaccurate, and that as far as it is accurate, it applies equally 
to naturalistic science. As it stands, this proposition is 
partly untrue. In general one understands by it, that in 
the ecclesiastical Creed or in the Holy Scriptures the results 
are already given. If a conflict arises between the result of 
our investigation and our ecclesiastical creed, it may render 
our ecclesiastical position untenable, but it cannot affect the 
maintenance of our scientific results. And as for the Holy 
Bible, it is ever the province and duty of science to verify 
what is inferred from it. Yet after the subtraction of these 



Chap. Ill] § 49. TWO KINDS OF SCIENCE 175 

two factors, it is still entirely true that in the abstract the 
results of our investigation are beforehand certain, and that, 
if we reach other results, our former results are not valid and 
our investigation is faulty. This, however, is common both to 
the science of palingenesis and to naturalistic science. The 
actual nature of the cosmos conditions the results of all 
investigation, and so far as there is question of knowledge 
which we obtain by thinking, our thinking can never be 
aught than the afi^e?'-thinking of what has been before thought 
by the Creator of all relations ; even to such an extent 
that all our thinking, to the extent that it aims to be and is 
original, can never be anything but pure hallucination. Hence 
it is entirely true, that in the domain of palingenesis all 
results of investigation are bound to the nature of palin- 
genesis, and determined by the real constitution of the 
spiritual world with which it brings us into relation ; it is 
also true, that that which has been well investigated will 
prove to agree with what has been revealed to us in an 
accurate way from this spiritual world ; nor may it be 
denied that in this realm also, all our thinking can only 
be the after-thinking of the thoughts of God ; but it has 
all this in common with the other science, and all this is 
inherent in the nature of science. If the objection be raised 
that in the prosecution of science as directed by palingen- 
esis, it is a matter of pre-assumption that there is a God, 
that a creation took place, that sin reigns, etc., we grant this 
readily, but in the same sense in which it is pre-assumed in 
all science that there is a human being, that that human 
being thinks, that it is possible for this human being to 
think mistakenly, etc., etc. He to whom these last-named 
things are not presuppositions, will not so much as put his 
hand to the plough in the field of science ; and such is the 
case with him who does not know, with greater certainty 
than he knows his own existence, that God is his Creator, 
entirely apart from palingenesis. Facts such as are here 
named, — that there is a God, that a creation took place, 
that sin exists, etc., — can never be established by scientific 
investigation ; nor has this ever been attempted but some 



176 § 50. THE PROCESS OE SCIENCE [Div. II 

aciiter mind was at hand to convict its predecessor of error. 
Only let it be remembered, that in this section we do by no 
means refer to Theology simply, nor even especially. Sci- 
ence, as here considered, is science which has the entirety 
of things as its object ; and only when we come to Theology 
may the special questions be answered, to which the entirely 
peculiar character of this holy science gives occasion. 

§ 50. The Process of Science 

Our proposition that there are two kinds of science is, 
from the nature of the case, merely the accommodation to a 
linguistic usage. The two sciences must never be coordi- 
nated with each other. In fact, no one can be convinced 
that there is more than one science, and that which 
announces itself as science by the side of, or in opposition 
to, this can never be acknowledged as such in the absolute 
sense. As soon as the thinker of palingenesis has come to 
that point in the road where the thinker of naturalism parts 
company with him, the latter's science is no longer anything 
to the former but "science falsely so called." Similarly 
the naturalistic thinker is bound to contest the name of 
science for that which the student of the " wisdom of God " 
derives from his premises. That which lies outside of the 
realm of these different premises is common to both, but 
that which is governed, directly or indirectly, by these 
premises comes to stand entirely diiferently to the one from 
what it does to the other. Always in this sense, of course, 
that only one is right and in touch with actual reality, but 
is unable to convince the other of wrong. It will once be 
decided, but not until the final consummation of all things. 
For though it must be granted, that in what is called the 
moral and social "Banquerott der Wissenschaft," even now 
a test is often put in part to the twofold problem ; and though 
it is equally clear that every investigator will come to know 
this decision at his death : yet this does not change the fact 
that, of necessity, the two kinds of science continue to spin 
their two threads, as long as the antithesis is maintained 
between naturalism and palingenesis; and it is this very 



Chap. Ill] § 50. THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE 177 

antithesis which the parousia will bring to an end, or — this 
end will never come. 

Hence formal recognition only is possible from either side. 
The grateful acceptance of those results of investigation 
which lie outside of the point in question, is no recog- 
nition, but is merely a reaping of harvests from common 
fields. So far, on the other hand, as the antithesis between 
our human personality, as it manifests itself in sinful nat- 
ure and is changed by palingenesis, governs the investi- 
gation and demonstration, we stand exclusively opposed to 
one another, and one must call falsehood what the other 
calls truth. Formally, one can concede, as we do without 
reservation, that from the view-point of the opponent, 
the scientific impulse could not lead to any other prosecu- 
tion of science, even with the most honest intention; so 
that, though his results must be rejected, his formal labor 
and the honesty of his intention must claim our apprecia- 
tion. That this appreciation is mostly withheld from us, is 
chiefly explained from the fact that, from the view-point of 
palingenesis, one can readily imagine himself at the view- 
point of unregenerated nature, while he who considers fallen 
nature normal, cannot even conceive the possibility of a palin- 
genesis. For which reason, every scientific effort that goes out 
from the principle of palingenesis is either explained as fanat- 
icism or is attributed to motives of ambition and selfishness. 

Hence the urgent necessity to combat the false represen- 
tation that that science which lives from the principle of 
palingenesis lacks all organic process, and consists merely 
in the schematic application of dogmas to the several prob- 
lems that present themselves. This representation is antago- 
nistic to the very conception of science, and is contradicted 
by experience. Very marked differences of insight pre- 
vail among the scholars of the science which operates from 
the principle of palingenesis, as well as among the others, 
and many institutions and schools form themselves. There 
is, therefore, no organic, multiform process of science among 
naturalists and a schematic, barren monotony with the men 
of palingenesis ; but the calling of science to strive after an 



178 § 50. THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

objective unity of result born from multiformity, in the face 
of all the disturbance of subjectivity, is common to both. 

To both the general subject of science is, and always will 
be, the human mind at large and not the ego of the individual 
investigator. The rule is also common to both, that the 
human mind does not operate except through the subject of 
individual investigators, and that these, according to their 
differences of disposition, of age, and habits of life, can sever- 
ally bring in but a very small and limited, a very subjec- 
tively tinted and one-sidedly represented, contribution to 
the final harvest of science. This many-sided variety gives 
rise to divers antitheses and contradictory representations, 
which for a time establish themselves in the institutions and 
schools, which are in process of time superseded by other 
antitheses, and from which again new institutions and 
schools are born. Thus there is continual friction and con- 
stant fermentation, and under it all goes on the process of 
an entirely free development, which is in no wise bound 
except by its point of departure, whether in unregenerate 
or in regenerate human nature. Let no one think, there- 
fore, that Christian science, if we may so call the science 
which takes palingenesis as its point of departure, will all 
at once lead its investigators to entirely like and harmonious 
results. This is impossible, because with the regenerate 
also, the differences of subjective disposition, of manner of 
life, and of the age in which one lives, remain the same; 
and because Christian science would be no science, if it did 
not go through a process by which it advanced from less to 
more, and if it were not free in its investigation, with the 
exception of being bound by its point of departure. That 
which the prosecutor of Christian science takes as his point 
of departure is to him as little a result of science as to the 
naturalist; but he, as well as the naturalist, must obtain 
his results of science by investigation and demonstration. 



Only let it be remembered, that not every subjective repre- 
sentation which announces itself as scientific is a link in the 



Chap. Ill] § 50. THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE 179 

process of the development of science. The subjective ele- 
ment certainly bears on one side a necessary character, but 
also one which, all too often, is merely accidental or even 
sinful. In the spirit of humanity is a multiformity from 
which, for the sake of the full harmony, no single element 
can be spared; but there is also a false subjectivism which, 
instead of causing single tones to vibrate for the sake of 
the full accord, disturbs the accord by discord. To over- 
come this false subjectivism, and to silence these discords, 
is by no means the least important part of the task of science. 
However much this false subjectivism may exert itself in 
the domain of Christian science, as well as in that of natural- 
istic science, yet we may assert that with Christian science 
this parasite does not reach an equal development of strength. 
Palingenesis takes away from the human spirit much on 
which otherwise this parasite feeds, and the enlightening, 
which develops itself from regeneration, applies a saving 
bridle to this false subjectivism. But this parasite will 
never be wanting from the domain of Christian science, 
simply because palingenesis does not absolutely remove the 
after-working's of unresrenerated nature. Hence it is also 
the calling of Christian science to resist this false subjectiv- 
ism, but only by scientific combat. 

As far, on the other hand, as this subjective element is of 
necessity connected with the multiformity of all human life, 
the differences born from this will reveal themselves in Chris- 
tian science more strongly rather than more weakly, because 
palingenesis allows these subjective differences to fully assert 
themselves, and does not, like naturalism, kill them. From 
the earliest ages of the Christian religion, therefore, these an- 
titheses in the domain of Christian science, and the tendencies 
born from them, have ever assumed a much firmer and more 
concrete form, especially where they ran parallel with the 
ecclesiastical distinctions. But in the realm of Christian 
science it will never do for these several tendencies to point 
to the ecclesiastical basis of operation, as the source from 
which they obtained their greater permanency. Every ten- 
dency is bound scientifically to defend its assertions in the 



180 § 50. THE PROCESS OF SCIENCE [Div. II 

face of those of other tendencies. One may even say that 
this scientific labor maintains the spiritual communion be- 
tween those who are ecclesiastically separated and estranged 
from each other. And if this is objected to by the state- 
ment that the prosecutors of this science often assume the 
position over against one another, that tJiey on\j possess 
truth in its absolute form, the threefold remark is in place : 
First, that in their realm the students of naturalistic science 
often do the same thing; that with them also one school 
often stands over against the other with the pretence of 
publishing absolute truth. Secondly, that we must dis- 
tinguish between what the student of Christian science 
professes as a church-member, and what he offers as the 
result of his scientific investigation. But, in the third 
place also, that idealism in science demands that every man 
of conviction shall firmly believe that, provided their devel- 
opment be normal, every other investigator must reach the 
same result as he. He who shrinks from this cannot affirm 
that he holds the result of his own investigation as true; 
he becomes a sceptic. He who in his OAvn conception has 
not stepped out from his subjectivity in order to grasp the 
eternally true, has no conviction. And though it be entirely 
true that history plainly teaches, that the ripest and noblest 
conviction has never escaped the one-sidedness of one's own 
subjectivity, the inextinguishable impulse of our human 
nature never denies itself, but sees truth in that which it 
has grasped for itself as truth. 

Hence the result we reach is, that the effort which reveals 
itself in our nature to obtain a scientific knowledge of the 
cosmos by investigation and demonstration, is ever bound 
to the premises in our nature from which this effort starts 
out. That for this reason this effort leads to a common 
practice of science, as far as these premises remain equal, 
but must divide itself as soon as the fork is reached where 
the change effected in these premises by palingenesis begins 
to influence the investigation. That for this part of the 
investigation, therefore, two kinds of scientific study run 
parallel, one which is, and one which is not, governed by 



Chap. Ill] § 51. BOTH SCIENCES UNIVERSAL 181 

the fact of palingenesis. That they who study science under 
the influence of palingenesis, as well as they who leave it 
out of account, can only hold for true what rests on their 
own premises, and thus can appreciate each other's study 
only in a formal manner. That with Christian, as well as 
with naturalistic science, that only stands scientifically sure 
which, going out from its own premises, each has obtained 
as the result of scientific research. That consequently, in 
both studies of science, all sorts of antitheses, tendencies, 
and schools will reveal themselves, and that by this process 
alone science on both sides advances. And finally, that 
because the influence of the subjective element, occasioned 
by a difference of disposition, manner of life, spiritual 
tendency, and age, makes itself felt with both, every in- 
vestigator deems his own result of science true in the 
broadest sense ; thereby going out from the conviction that, 
provided he carries on his investigation well, every normal 
investigator will attain a like result with himself. 

§ 51. Both Sciences Universal 

The proposition, that in virtue of the fact of palingenesis 
a science develops itself by the side of the naturalistic^ 
which, though formally allied to it, is differently disposed, 
and therefore different in its conclusions, and stands over 
against it as Christian science, must not be understood in a 
specifically theological, but in an absolutely universal sense. 
The difference between the two is not merely apparent in 
theological science, but in all the sciences, in so far as 
the fact of palingenesis governs the whole subject in all in- 
vestigations, and hence also, the result of all these investi- 
gations as far as their data are not absolutely material. To 
support this proposition, however, two things must still be 
shown : first, that in both cases science is taken in the sense 
of universal-human validity ; and, secondly, that palingenesis 
is not merely a subjective psychical, but a universal phenom- 
enon, which involves both the investigating subject and the 
cosmos. Inasmuch, however, as we are writing a theological 
encyclopedia, we do not proceed here to the exposition of this, 



182 §51. BOTH SCIENCES UNIVERSAL [Div. II 

but reserve it for treatment under the development of the con- 
ception of Theology. At this point, therefore, a simple sug- 
gestion suffices. Concerning the first, the universally valid 
character is inseparable from all science ; not in the sense that 
every individual agrees with you, but that the subject of your 
science is, and ever will be, the universal human conscious- 
ness. Well, then, the palingenesis, which does not operate 
within single persons atomistically, but organically upon our 
race, will produce this result: that the tree of humanity, our 
race, humanity as a whole, and thus also the universal human 
consciousness^ shall be glorified and sanctified in the " body of 
Christ." He who remains outside of this till the end, falls 
away from humanity. Up to the time of this final solution, 
however, neither the naturalistic nor the Christian science 
have any universally compulsive character outside of their 
own sphere. We encounter one another in open conflict, and 
a universally compulsory science, that shall be compulsory 
upon all men, is inconceivable. And concerning the second 
point, let the provisional remark suffice, that there is not 
merely a palingenesis of the human soul, but also a palin- 
genesis of the body and of the cosmos. This accounts for 
the central character of the Resurrection of Christ, and for 
the far-reaching significance of the restoration of the cosmos, 
which in Matthew xix. 28 is indicated by this very word of 
2)alingenesis. 



CHAPTER IV 

DIVISION OF SCIENCE 

§ 52. Organic Division of Scientific Study 

Before we can find a provisional answer, in the closing 
chapter of this division, to the question, Avhether Theology 
is or is not a necessary and an integral part of the organism 
of science, this organism itself must be somewhat closely ex- 
amined. Only when the anatomy of this organism is known, 
can it be seen of what parts it consists, and whether among 
these parts a science in the spirit of what we call Theology 
occupies a place of its own. Of course, in the framing 
of this conclusion we must start out with a definition of 
Theology, which cannot be explained until the following 
division ; but for the sake of clearness in the process of the 
argument, this hypothetical demonstration is here indispen- 
sable. 

As far as the organism of science itself is concerned, we have 
purposely chosen as the title of this section the expression : The 
organic division of scientific study. If the organic division 
of science itself is viewed, apart from its relation to practice, 
nothing is obtained but an abstraction, which lies entirely 
outside of history and reality ; and the question whether 
Theology is a science in this scientific organism can never 
be answered. For Theology is an historic-concrete com- 
plex, which, if brought over into the retort of abstractions, 
would at once slip through our fingers and volatilize. 

As regards the organic character of science, three data 
must be taken into account : (1) the organic relation among 
the several parts of the object of science; (2) the organic 
relation among the different capacities of the subject and the 
data which lead to the knowledge of the object ; and (3) the 
organic relation which in consequence of (1) and (2) must 

183 



184 § 52. OKGANIC DIVISION [Div. II 

appear in the result of the scientific task. The object exists 
organically ; the subject itself exists organically and stands 
organically related to the object; and consequently this 
organic character must be found again, as soon as the knowl- 
edge of the object has been attained by the subject with 
sufficient completeness and accuracy. The unity of these 
three reveals itself historically in the scientific task, which 
did not begin by making these distinctions clear for itself, 
but had its rise in the instinctive faith in this mutual rela- 
tionship. The stimulus to undertake this scientific study is 
not given by an Academy of Sciences, but by our innate 
inclination to investigate. As a child breaks his toys and 
cuts them into pieces, in order to find out what they are 
and how they are constructed ; or, as outside of his play- 
hour he overwhelms you with questions ; thus is man 
prompted by a natural impulse to investigate the cosmos. 
And, though with adults also this desire after knowledge 
may consist too largely of a playful inquiry, the needs 
of life add a nobler seriousness to this playful investiga- 
tion and by it rule and continuity are imparted to the sci- 
entific task. If the practical need of physicians, lawyers, 
ministers of the Word, Academic professors, etc., did not 
continually press its claims, the very existence of universities 
Avould at once be jeopardized. If these were abolished, and 
with them the avenues to success were closed against those 
who desire to devote their lives to scientific pursuits, a small 
group only of competent persons would be able to allow 
itself the luxury of this pursuit. And if the number of sci- 
entists should thus be reduced, the study of science would 
likewise suffer from the gradual disappearance of the whole 
apparatus which is now at its service in libraries, labora- 
tories, observatories, etc. The vitae non scolae is true also 
in the sense that only life gives the school its susceptibility 
to life. 

The ideal representation that science would still be able to 
flourish when practised merely for its own sake, rests upon 
self-deception. This is best observed in the case of those 
special sciences whose study is not immediately born from 



Chap. IV] OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY 185 

the practical need of life, and whose development in conse- 
quence has been so greatly retarded. If there were no 
logic in this practical need of life, and if it were not con- 
nected with the organic motive of science itself, this de- 
pendence of the school upon life would be most fatal, and 
would obstruct the smooth progress of scientific investiga- 
tion. This, however, is not so. The practical need of life 
is born from the relation in which the subject stands to the 
object, and from the necessary way in which the subject 
(humanity) develops itself organically from itself. It must 
be conceded that the claims which this practical need causes 
to be felt, are not always considered in the accurate order of 
succession, and that only after several fits and starts do they 
assume a more normal character ; but the result also shows 
that science has made all these fluctuations with them, and 
only when the practical need of life has begun to express itself 
in clearer language, and, consequently, with clearer self-con- 
sciousness, has it assumed a more normal character. This 
would certainly have proved a difficulty, if the slow ripen- 
ing of this clear insight into the claims of practical need 
were bound to any other law than that which governs the 
development of science itself ; but it has created no disturb- 
ance, since both the development of these practical needs and 
the development of science have been governed by the self- 
same power, i.e. by the actual mode of existence and or- 
ganic relation of object and subject. Every encyclopedical 
division of the sciences, which aims to be something more 
than a specimen of mental gymnastics, will therefore in the 
main always proceed from the practical division given histori- 
cally in the academical faculties. Not as though this division 
were simply to be copied ; for this division, which has already 
been modified so often, is always susceptible of further modi- 
fication ; but these future modifications also will not abstractly 
regulate themselves according to the demands of your scheme, 
but will be permanently governed by the demands of prac- 
tical need ; and only when your schematic insight has modi- 
fied the form in which the practical need of life asserts itself, 
will this insight, through the medium of practical life, be 



186 § 52. ORGANIC DIVISION [Div. II 

able to influence effectually the process of discriminating the 
faculties. 

But while criticism of the division of scientific study, as it 
is controlled by that of the faculties, is in every way lawful 
and obligatory. Encyclopedic science is nevertheless bound 
to set out from this historic division. It is not to dissect an 
imaginary organism of science, but it must take as its start- 
ing-point the body of science as it actually and historically 
presents itself ; it must trace the thought which has deter- 
mined the course of this study; and, reinforced with this lead- 
ing thought, it must critically examine that which actually is. 
Encyclopedia is no speculative, but a positive, science ; it 
finds the object of its investigation in the actually given 
development of science. As long as this object had not 
sufficiently developed, the very thought of Encyclopedic 
science could not suggest itself. Its study only begins when 
the study of the sciences has acquired some form of perma- 
nency. Since historically Theology has called into life a 
faculty of its own and has presented itself in this faculty as 
a complex of studies ; and since it is our exclusive aim to 
answer the question whether Theology takes a place of its 
own in the organism of the sciences ; it would be futile to 
sketch the organism of science in the abstract. For in the 
case both of ourselves and of our opponents this sketch would 
of necessity be controlled by the sympathy or antipathy 
which each fosters for Theology. Hence that we may have 
ground beneath our feet, we should not lose ourselves in 
speculative abstractions, but must start out from the historic 
course which, under the influence of the practical needs of 
life, has been pursued by the study of the sciences. 

Practically, now, we see that the theological faculty was 
the first to attain a more fixed form. Alongside of it, and fol- 
lowing immediately in its wake, is the juridical faculty. Next 
to these two is the slow growth of the medical, as a third 
independent faculty. The so-called philosophical faculty 
finds its precursors in the Artistse ^ ; but it is a slow process 
by which these surmount the purely propaedeutic character 

1 Artistse was the name of the teachers of classic languages. 



Chap. IV] OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY 187 

which their study bore at first. The facultas litteraria^ 
either in or out of connection with the faculty of natural 
philosophy, only gradually takes its place by the side of the 
above-named three. Clergymen, laAvyers and physicians 
were everywhere needed, while a man of letters and a natu- 
ral philosopher could find a place only in a few schools. 
To every one hundred young men, who studied in the first 
three faculties, there were scarcely five who found their 
career in the study of literature or natural philosophy. 
And for this reason the first three faculties were for a long 
time the principal faculties, and the study of the Artistae 
and Physicists were mere auxiliaries to them. Propsedeutics 
was the all-important interest, and not the independent 
study of Letters or of Natural Philosophy. From this 
it must also be explained, that at so many universities 
the study of Letters and of Natural Philosophy has always 
been combined in the same faculty. In Holland the un- 
tenability of this union has long since been recognized, and 
the Literary and Natural Philosophy faculties have each 
been allowed a separate existence; and the fact that else- 
where they still remain together is simply the result of the 
common propaedeutic character which was deemed to con- 
stitute their reason for being. The practical needs of life to 
broaden the knowledge of nature have for more than a century 
caused the independent character of the natural sciences con- 
vincingly to appear, and this very detachment of the study 
of natural philosophy has quickened the literary studies to 
a sense of their own independence. The difference of method 
especially, between the two kinds of sciences, was too pro- 
nounced to allow the auxiliary character of literary studies to 
be maintained. This last process of the emancipation of the 
literary faculty, however, is still so imperfect, that no com- 
mon opinion has yet been obtained on the unity of matter, 
or, if you please, on the real object of this group of sciences. 
The philological, historical and philosophical studies still 
seek their organic unity. But in any case it seems an 
accepted fact, that the cyclus of studies will run its round 
in the circle of these five faculties. Although there seems 



188 § 52. ORGANIC DIVISION [Div. II 

to be a disposition abroad to let the Theological faculty be- 
come extinct, or to supersede it by a faculty of Philosophy, 
no serious desire is perceived to enlarge the number of 
faculties beyond the five, and it is scarcely conceivable that 
the practical needs of life will ever warrant the increase 
of this number. Neither the smaller or larger number of 
departments, nor the lesser or greater number of professors, 
but only the combination of studies demanded by a practical 
education, decides in the end the number and the division 
of the faculties. 

Meanwhile it is by no means asserted that the prosecution 
of science, and in connection with it the university life, 
should aim exclusively at a practical education. On the con- 
trary, the pursuit of science for its own sake is the ideal 
which must never be abandoned. We merely emphasize that 
the way to this ideal does not lead through sky and clouds, 
but through practical life. A science which loses itself in 
speculation and in abstraction never reaches its ideal, but 
ends in disaster ; and the high ideal of science will be the 
more nearly realized in proportion as the thirst after and the 
need of this ideal shall express themselves more strongly in 
human life, so that the practical need of it shall be stimulated 
by life. As the transition from unconscious into conscious life 
advances, the impulse born of society increases of itself to 
account for every element and every relation, and, thanks 
to this impulse, the prosecution of science for its own sake 
carries the day. 

In connection with this it is noteworthy that the three 
originally principal faculties were born of the necessity of 
warding off evil. This is seen in the strongest light in the 
case of the medical faculty, which still exhibits this negative 
character in name, and partly even in practice. It is not 
called the somatic faculty, to express the fact that the human 
body is the object of its study ; nor the hygienic faculty, to 
express the fact that health is the object of its choice; but 
the medical^ by which name the diseased body alone is desig- 
nated as its real object. This accords with the attention 
which man bestows in real life upon his body. As long as 



Chap. IV] OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY 189 

one is well and feels no indisposition, he does not inquire 
into the location and the action of the organs in his body; 
and only when one feels pain and becomes ill does the pains- 
taking care for the body begin. Alike observation applies 
to the juridical faculty. If there were no evil in the world 
there would be no public authority, and it is only for the 
sake of evil that the authority is instituted, that the judge 
pronounces judgment, and that the making of laws is de- 
manded. Not for the sake of the study of law as such, 
but for the sake of rendering a well-ordered human in- 
tercourse possible in the midst of a sinful society, did 
jurisprudence undertake its work ; and the juridical faculty 
came into being for the education of men who, as states- 
men and judges, are leaders of public life. This also applies 
to the theological faculty, though not in so absolute a sense. 
Because it was found that salvation for the sinner, and a 
spiritual safeguard against the fatal effects of wickedness, 
were indispensable, both law and gospel were demanded. 
The purpose was medical, but in the Theological faculty it 
was psychic, as it was somatic in the so-called Medical fac- 
ulty. For though it must be acknowledged that originally 
the aim of the Theological faculty was not exclusively soteri- 
ological, but that on the contrary it also tried to foster theti- 
cally the knowledge of God, yet the call for an educated 
clergy, and the concomitant prosperity of this faculty, are 
due in the first place to the fact that men were needed 
everywhere who would be able to act as physicians against 
sin and its results. Hence it is actually the struggle against 
evil in the hodi/, in society/, and in the soul which has cre- 
ated the impulse for these three groups of sciences, the need 
of men to combat this evil, and consequently the necessity 
for the rise of these three faculties. All three bear orisfi- 
nally a militant character. This cannot be said of the Artistse, 
nor of the faculties of Literature and Natural Philosophy 
which at a later period were formed from their circle. 
In the case of these studies positive knowledge was much more 
the immediate object in view, even though it must be granted 
that this knowledge was pursued only rarely for its own sake. 



190 § 52. ORGANIC DIVISION [Div. II 

and much more for the sake of utility. One studied natural 
philosophy and letters in order to become a jurist, physician, 
or theologian, or to obtain power over nature. But with this 
reservation it is evident that from the beginning these pro- 
visionally dependent faculties stood nearer to the scientific 
ideal, and formally occupied a higher point of view. 

If it is asked what distinctions control this actual division 
of scientific labor, it is easily seen that the attention of the 
thoughtful mind had directed itself in turn to man and to 
nature that surrounds him ; that, as far as his own being is 
concerned, man has occupied himself severally with his so- 
matic^ psychic^ and social existence ; and that even more 
than these four groups of sciences, he aimed distinctively at 
the knowledge of Grod. The accuracy of this division, which 
sprang from practical need, is apparent. The principium of 
division is the subject of science, i.e. Man. This leads to 
the coordination of man himself with nature, which he rules, 
and with his Grod, by whom he feels himself ruled. And this 
trilogy is crossed by another threefold division, which concerns 
" man " as such, even the distinction between one man and 
many, and alongside of this the antithesis between his somatic 
and psychic existence. Thus the subject was induced in the 
Theological faculty, to investigate the knowledge of God, and 
in the faculty of natural philosophy to pursue the knowledge 
of nature ; to investigate the somatic existence of man in the 
Medical, his psychic existence in the Philological facult}^, 
and finally in the Juridical faculty to embrace all those 
studies which bear upon human relationships. The boun- 
dary between these provinces of science is nowhere absolutely 
certain, and between each two faculties there is always some 
more or less disputed ground ; but this cannot be otherwise, 
since the parts of the object of science are organically re- 
lated, and the reflection of this object in the consciousness 
of the subject exhibits an equally organic character. 

If science had begun with devising a scheme for the divi- 
sion of labor, these disputed frontier-fields of the faculties 
would have been carefully distributed. Since science, how- 
ever, and the division of faculties both, are products of the 



Chap. IV] OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY 191 

organic process of life, it could not be otherwise than that 
uncertainty at the boundaries, which is the mark of all or- 
ganic division, here also shows itself. Should the Medical 
faculty teach psychology for the sake of psychiatry and of the 
psychical influences upon the body? Does the philosophy of 
nature and of law belong to the Philological, or to the Psy- 
chical and Juridical faculty ? Is the place for Church-law in the 
Theological faculty or in the Juridical faculty, which itself 
originated from it as the " Decretorum facultas," and which 
for many years it claimed in the title of iuris utriusque doctor f 
These questions, together with many others, have all been 
solved in a practical way such as is of course open to critical 
examination by self-conscious science in its Encyclopedia, but 
such as a closer investigation claims an ever-increasing re- 
spect for the accuracy that marks the decision of practice. 
The Encyclopedia of the sciences is safest, therefore, when it 
does not abandon this historic track marked out by prac- 
tice. A speculative scheme, in which the organic-genetic 
relations of the sciences are fitted to another last, would 
have almost no other value than to evoke our admiration 
for the ingeniousness of the writer. Thus various titles of 
departments would be obtained, for which there are no 
departments of study. In our review of the history of 
Theologic Encyclopedia,^ it has been seen that, in the study 
of Theology also, such speculations have not been spared, 
and numerous departments for new and imaginary branches 
of study have been formed ; but, meanwhile, practice has 
continued the even tenor of its waj^, and real study has 
been best served by this practical division. This would 
not be so, if the object and the subject of science, and also 
the development of life and of the consciousness of life, 
stood in no necessary relation to each other ; but since this 
all-sided relation cannot be denied, and the process of sci- 
ence and the process of life almost always keep equal step, 
history offers us an important objective guarantee of accu- 
racy. There is a power that directs the course of our life- 

1 In tlie translation this review of the history of Theologic Encyclopedia, 
occupying in the original 432 pages, has been omitted. 



192 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

process, and there is a power that directs the course of the 
process of science. This dominion does not rest in the hand 
of a single individual, but, for life and science both, is in 
the hand of a Spirit who stands above all individuals ; and 
since in both realms (in that of life as well as in that of 
science) this power is exercised by one and the selfsame 
Spirit, the correct idea of the organism of science comes 
of itself to light in history, though it be only gradually and 
not without fits and starts. 

§ 53. The Five Faculties 

In the preceding section the Theological faculty was num- 
bered with the other four, in order to state the fact that it 
was born from the practical needs of life, and that it has stood 
behind none of the others in the manner of formation. Its 
right of primogeniture among these five can scarcely be 
disputed. But however important a weight this fact may 
add to the scale, it does by no means yet define the posi- 
tion which Theology is entitled to hold in the organism of 
science. The fact may not be overlooked, that at more than 
one university the faculty of Theology has practically been 
abolished; that at a number of universities it continues 
merely as the child of tradition ; and that in this traditional 
prolongation of its life it has undergone, more than any other 
faculty, so violent a metamorphosis that at length the iden- 
tity of the object of its study has been entirely lost. Not 
merely the need, therefore, of judicious criticism, but practice 
itself places a very grave interrogation mark after this heri- 
tage of history, and compels, with respect to Theology, a 
closer investigation into its certificate of birth and its right 
of domicile. To do this, however, it is necessary that we 
first orient ourselves a little with reference to the other parts 
of the realm, in order to obtain a definite conception of the 
other four faculties. 

Since for our investigation the Philological is the most 
important, we will consider that first. This faculty has not 
yet attained its self-consciousness. It would have done this 
much sooner, if the faculty of Natural Philosophy had 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 193 

been separated from it in Germany as timely as in Holland. 
Now, however, this unnatural conjunction has in many 
ways confused insight into the character of Philological 
study. Even when the studies of Philology and Natural 
Philosophy are separated, every difficulty is by no means yet 
surmounted, for then the antithesis is at once encountered be- 
tween the studies of Philosophy and Philology in the narrower 
sense. It has more than once been proposed to allow Phi- 
losophy a faculty of its own and to give it the house in which 
Theology lies dying. The Philological faculty would then 
become exclusively the faculty of letters^ and in an eminent 
sense engage itself with all those studies which the littera 
scripta gives rise to or renders possible. And from this point 
of view a third antithesis appears : viz. the antithesis be- 
tween Historical studies and those of Philology proper. If 
indeed the criterium for the object of Philology lies in the 
littera scripta^ then it both can and must investigate the his- 
torical documents and the historical expositions, as literary 
products, but the real content of History lies outside of its 
horizon. In this wise the faculty is more and more reduced, 
and at length its only remaining object is that which is tvritten^ 
which condemns it as an independent faculty. However 
highly one may estimate its value, letters can never form 
a principal group in the organism of the object; and to 
a certain extent it is even contingent. The object existed 
long centuries before literary life manifested itself. Hence 
the name Literary faculty can in no case be taken as a start- 
ing-point. We owe this name to Humanism, which in this 
instance also did not forsake its superficial character. " Philo- 
logical " is therefore in every way a richer and a more deeply 
significant name, because the Logos does not refer to the 
letter^ but to that which the letter serves as body. For a 
long time the restricted meaning of word or of language 
was attached to the logos in '-'- Philology," and consequently 
Philology was interpreted as standing outside of Philosophy 
and History. This, however, only showed how dimly it was 
understood that every faculty must have a principal group 
in the object of science as the object of its investigation. If 



194 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

word, and language still more, is a wider conception than 
that of littera scripta^ yet language and word can never 
acquire the significance of being a principal group in the 
object of science. As a life-expression of man the life of 
language is coordinated with the expressions of the ethical, 
aesthetic and material life, and hence for each of these a 
separate faculty should have to be created. As long as only 
the expression of life is studied the object of science is not 
grasped. This is done only when life itself is reached, the ex- 
pression of which is observed. This, in the case of the logos, 
is, in its general sense, the life of the human consciousness. It 
is this life which recapitulates itself in the logos, taken as 
thought; expresses itself in the logos, taken as word; and 
which for a very considerable part is at our disposal in the 
literary product. And thus we have laid our hand upon a 
principal group in the great object of science; for not only does 
man belong to this object, but is himself the most important 
factor in it, and it is in his wonderful consciousness that pres- 
ently the whole cosmos reflects itself. If now in this sense 
the object of this faculty is understood to be the conscious 
lif^ of man^ the word conscious must of necessity be taken in 
its pregnant sense. Else all science could be brought under 
this faculty, even that of nature. But this danger is evaded 
if, on the other hand, full emphasis is placed upon the quality 
of conscious life, so that in this faculty our life is in question 
only from the side of our consciousness. By doing this we 
keep in the path first indicated by Boeck and extended so 
much farther by my esteemed colleague. Dr. J. Woltjer, in 
his Rectoral oration of 1891.^ If Boeck placed thinhing too 
much in the foreground. Dr. Woltjer rightly perceived that 
from thinking we must go back to the Logos as reason in 
man ; and it is therefore entirely in keeping with the relation 
established by him, that in Philology we interpret the word 
Logos as indicating that which is conscious in our life. 

And thus the view-point is gained, from which the prac- 
tice is justified, which has ever united philosophical and 
historical studies with that of Letters. Even if language and 

1 The Science of the Logos, by Dr. J, Woltjer, 1891. 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 195 

everything that is connected with language is the vehicle of 
human consciousness, the study of this vehicle does by no 
means end the study of that consciousness itself. That 
human consciousness also as such, according to its form and 
comprehensive content, must be made the object of investi- 
gation, and this necessitates the formal and material study of 
philosophy. Above all it should be taken into consideration 
that it is not the consciousness of a single individual, but the 
consciousness of man as such, and hence of humanity in its re- 
lation and continuous process, that is to be known ; and this 
gives rise to the task of History. Hence it is the one Logos, 
taken as the consciousness of humanity, which provides the 
motive for Linguistic and Historic and Philosophic studies ; so 
that no reasonable objection can be raised against the name of 
Philological faculty. " Logoi " was indeed the word used 
originally for an historical narrative, and this gave historians 
the name of Logographers. In this way the combination of 
Linguistic, Historic, and Philosophic studies does not lead to 
an aggregate, but to an organic unity, which in an excellent 
manner locates a principal group of the object of science in 
a realm of its own. It is man in antithesis with nature^ and 
in man his logical^ in antithesis with his bodily manifestation, 
which determine the boundaries of this realm. The unity 
that lies in this may not be abandoned. 

Meanwhile let it be observed, that the task of this faculty 
should not be extensively, but intensively interpreted. The 
object of its existence is not the study of every conceivable 
language, nor the investigation of all history, nor yet the 
systematizing of the whole content of the human conscious- 
ness. The Faculty, as such, must direct its attention to 
the consciousness of humanity taken as an organic unity, 
and thus must concentrate its power upon that in which the 
process of this human consciousness exhibits itself. It does 
not cast its plummet into a stagnant pool, but away out in 
the stream of human life. Its attention is not riveted by 
what vegetates in isolation, but by that which lives and asso- 
ciates with and operates within the life of humanity. For 
this reason the classical and richly developed languages from 



196 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

the old world and the new are so vastly more important to 
this Faculty, as such, than the defective languages of the 
more supine and undeveloped nations. It does not look 
upon Literature as an aggregate of everything that has been 
handed down in writing, but as an organic conception, which 
only embraces that which is excellent in form and content. 
History also is only that in which the human consciousness 
has developed strength to bring the human life to the fuller 
unfolding of its idea. And as material Philosophy, it merely 
offers that which has advanced the current of human thought, 
and has enabled its different tendencies to express themselves 
correctly. The proposal to overwhelm this Faculty with the 
study of all conceivable languages and peoples and conceptions 
must therefore be declined. This deals the death-blow to 
this Faculty, makes it top-heavy, and causes it to lose all 
unity in its self -consciousness. In order to maintain itself as 
a faculty it must distinguish between main interests and side- 
issues, and maintain unity in multiformity, and keep its 
attention fixed upon that which in continuous process has 
ever more richly unfolded the consciousness of our human 
race, has enabled it to fuller action, and has brought it to 
clearer consciousness. We do not deny that other languages 
also, peoples and conceptions may be the object of scien- 
tific research, but this sort of study must annex itself to 
the work of this faculty, and not consume its strength. 
This self-limitation is not only necessary in order that it 
may handle its own material, but also that it may not lose 
its hold on life, and thus may keep itself from conflict 
with practical demands. Duty, therefore, demands that 
in the study of the human consciousness it should not 
swing away to the periphery, but that it shall take its station 
at the centrum, and never lose from sight the fact that the 
object of its investigation is the conscious life of our human 
race taken as an organic unity. With this in view it inves- 
tigates language as the wondrous instrument given as vehicle 
to our consciousness; the richest development which language 
has proved capable of in the Classical languages of ancient and 
modern times ; and the full-grown and ripe fruit which Ian- 



CiiAP. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 197 

guage has produced in classical Literature. Next to this study 
of language as vehicle and incorporation of our consciousness, 
follows the investigation into the activities of this conscious- 
ness in the life of humanity, i.e. the broad study of History. 
And then, at length, formal and material Philosophy follow; 
the first to investigate conscious life in its nature, and the 
laws which govern it ; the second to answer the question, 
how the " World-Image " (Weltbild) has gradually formed 
itself in this consciousness, and in what form it exhibits 
itself at present. This order of succession certainly gives 
rise to the objection, that formal philosophy should properly 
lead the van ; nevertheless, we deem it necessary to maintain 
it, because formal as well as material philosophy assumes a 
preceding development of language, and hence also a preced- 
ing history. 

The Medical faculty being of less importance for our investi- 
gation may therefore be more briefly considered. We for our 
part do not desire the name of Medical faculty to be changed 
into Somatological or Philoso7natical faculty. We would not 
have the fact lost from sight that this science did not origi- 
nate from the thirst after a knowledge of our body, but 
from the need of seeking healing for its diseases. For this 
implies the confession that our general human condition 
is neither sound nor normal, but is in conflict with a destruc- 
tive force, against which help from a saving power must be 
sought and can be found. This, however, does not weaken 
the demand that the medical character of these studies should 
not too absolutely be maintained. Obstetrics in itself is 
no real medical study. Moreover, medical stud}'- has always 
assumed the knowledge of the healthy body. And Hygiene, 
which demands an ever broader place, is not merely medical- 
prophylactic, but in part stands in line with the doctrine 
of diet, dress, etc., as tending to the maintenance of the 
healthy body. On these grounds it seems undeniable, that 
the object of investigation for this faculty is the human 
body, or better still, man from his somatic side. Alread}- 
for this reason the effort to take up the body of animals 



198 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

into this faculty should be protested against ; and warnings 
should be sounded against entertaining too sanguine expec- 
tations from vivisection, and against the altogether too bold 
exploits which it adventures. In itself, veterinary surger}^ 
would never have become anything more than an empiric 
knowledge ; and the insight it derives from the Medical 
faculty is a mercy which from our human life descends to 
suffering animals. But Darwinism should never tempt us in 
this faculty to coordinate man and animal under the concep- 
tion of "living things." If the human body had not been sub- 
ject to disease, there would never have been a medical science. 
Vegetation also has its diseases and invites medical treat- 
ment; but who will include the healing of plants in the 
Medical faculty ? The human body must remain the exclu- 
sive object for the complex of medical studies. The pro- 
plastic forms also, or preformations which were created for 
this body in the vegetable and animal kingdom, must indeed 
be investigated with a view to this body, but the studies 
which this investigation provokes serve exclusively as sub- 
sidiary helps, and should not be permitted to destroy the 
boundary between the human body and these preformations. 
In the same way the boundary should be guarded which 
divides the somatic life of man from his psychical life. 
This psychical life is the heritage of the Philological and not 
of the Medical faculty. If this boundary be crossed, the 
Medical faculty must subordinate the psychical phenomena 
to the somatic life, and cannot rest until, under the pressure 
of its own object, it has interpreted this psychical life 
materialistically. But neither should it be forgotten that an 
uncertain and mingled region lies between the somatic and 
the psychic life. Both sides of human life stand in organic 
relation. The body affects the soul, and the soul the body. 
Hence, there is on one side a physico-psychical study which 
must trace the psychical phenomena on physical ground, and 
on the other side a psychico-physical study which determines 
the influence exercised by the soul upon the body. And 
this must serve as a rule, that Psychology derives its physi- 
cal data from the Medical faculty ; while on the other hand 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE EIVE FACULTIES 199 

the Medical derives its psychological data from the Philo- 
logical faculty. That the Theological faculty also comes into 
consideration here is not denied ; but since it is the very 
purpose of this investigation to point out the place in the 
organism of science which belongs to the Theological faculty, 
we pass it by for the present. Only let the necessary obser- 
vation be made, that it is contradictory to the peculiar 
character of the medical studies to leave the important 
decision concerning the imputability of guilt in the process 
of punishment to be accounted for by this faculty. Finally 
a last boundary must be drawn for the medical faculty on the 
side of the juridical faculty. For on that side also medical 
science steps constantly beyond the lines of its propriety. It 
demands, indeed, that public authority shall unconditionally 
adopt the results from medical and hygienic domains into civil 
ordinances, and shall execute what it prescribes. This abso- 
lute demand should be declined, first, because these results 
lack an absolute, and sometimes even a constant character ; 
and in the second place, because it is not the task of 
medical, but of juridical science to investigate in how far 
the claims of the body should be conditioned by the higher 
claims of the psychic and social life. 

Within these boundaries these medical studies naturally 
divide themselves, according to their object, into studies 
which investigate the healthy body; which trace the phe- 
nomena of disease; and which have for their purpose the 
cure of these abnormal phenomena. The study of the body 
as such, i.e. in its healthy state, divides itself equally 
naturally into the somatical and psychico-somatical, while the 
somatic studies divide again into anatomy and physiology. 
The sciences which have for their object the deviations from 
the normal, i.e. the sick body, are pathology and psycho- 
pathology. The studies, finally, which direct themselves to 
Therapeutics, divide into medical, surgical, and psychiatri- 
cal, to which Medicine and applied Medica join themselves. 
Only the place of Obstetrics is not easily pointed out, be- 
cause a normal delivery, without pain, would not be a path- 
ological phenomenon, and to this extent Obstetrics would 



200 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

not find its motive in the medical, but in the somatical char- 
acter of these studies. As such it should belong as a tech- 
nical department to Physiology. From the view-point of 
Revelation, however, delivery with pain is an abnormal 
phenomenon, and to this extent we see no difficulty in coordi- 
nating obstetrics after the old style with medical and surgical 
science. With the exception of these incidental questions it 
is readily seen, meanwhile, that as long as the Medical science 
confines itself to these independent studies, it still lacks its 
higher unity ^ and cannot be credited with having come to a 
clear self-consciousness. This would only be possible if it 
could grasp the deeper cause of the corruption from which 
all diseases originate ; if, on the other hand, it could expose 
the relation between this cause and the reagents ; and thus 
could crown its labor by the production of a Medical 
Philosophy . 

The Juridical faculty claims a somewhat larger share of 
our attention, since it stands in a closer relation to that of 
Theology. In the object of science we found its province 
in man, — not in himself, but as taken in his relation to 
other men. This, however, must not be interpreted in the 
sense that man is merely a social being, and that therefore 
juridical study must lapse into sociology. The origin of 
this faculty is a protest against this. From the beginning 
it was a faculty for the study of Sancta Justitia, devoted to 
the education of those who were to administer the affairs of 
government and exercise the judicial function. Both these 
conceptions, of government and judicial power, were derived 
from the fundamental conception of the Supreme Authority. 
The folly of separating the powers of state had not yet been 
invented, and the intrinsic unity of all legislative, judicial, 
and governing power stood still firm in the common mind. 
Authority was exercised over men upon earth ; this authority 
Avas not original with man, but was conferred of God upon 
the magistracy. Hence the way in which this authority was 
to be exercised by the magistracy was not left to the arbi- 
trariness of despotism, but this authority fulfilled its end 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 201 

only "when it operated in harmony with the order of human 
society ordained of God. The laws and regulations to 
which this authority bound its subjects and itself were 
obliged, therefore, to meet a fixed claim ; and this claim had 
been established by God himself in the ordinances of his 
Creation, and had received its fuller interpretation in his 
special Revelation. Hence, though whatever the magistracy 
ordained as law was actually valid, as such, within the 
circle of their authority, and though as such it bound the 
conscience formally, the obligation that this enforced law 
should legitimate itself as law before a higher tribunal, and 
in other vv^ays be corrected, could not be ignored. From 
this obligation the study of law in the higher sense is born ; 
for profound and scientific study alone can obtain an insight 
into the nature of law in general, and into the special rela- 
tions of law, as they should be in order to correspond to 
the relations which have been divinely ordained in creation 
and by history mutually between man and man or among 
groups of men. 

The view, which formed the point of departure in this, 
Avas accurate in every way, viz., that there would have been 
no need of a magistracy, nor of the regulation of law, nor of 
a consequent study of law, if there had been no moral evil 
among men. In a sinless state, the correspondence of the 
social life to the demands of the holiest law would be spon- 
taneous. Hence, when this faculty originated, it was still 
the common confession that sin alone was the cause that one 
man was clothed with compulsory authority over the other. 
In a sinless society every occasion for the appearance of such 
a compulsory authority would fall away, because every one 
would feel himself immediately and in all things bound by 
the authority of God. And so it has come to pass that the 
Juridical faculty, as well as the Medical and the Theological, 
has disclosed the tendency to oppose an existing evil. If 
the Theological faculty tended to militate against evil in the 
heart of man, and the Medical to overcome evil in the human 
body, in like manner the Juridical faculty has tended to 
resist evil in the realm of Justice. In connection with this, 



202 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

the Juridical faculty bore a consecrated character. It did 
not study human relations in its own self-sufficiency, but 
realized its calling to lead the authority imposed of God 
upon men into the path of Right ordained by Him. Mean- 
while this almost sacred origin of the Juridical faculty does 
not prevent science from introducing the logical purpose 
of all science more prominently into the foreground of the 
Juridical domain, and from giving an account of the place 
which these studies also occupy in the organic unit of 
science. Viewed in this way, a proper, well-defined place 
in the object of general science should also be allotted to 
this study ; and in this sense there is no objection against 
seeking this proper domain of the juridical science, this 
provincia juris, in the social relations of man. The great 
development of the sociological and economical auxiliary 
departments shows, that the study of law actually moves in 
this direction, while no one seriously thinks of separating all 
sociological and economical studies from this faculty and 
of classing them with the Philological faculty, or, as far 
as the material object of economical studies is concerned, 
with the natural philosophical. 

It would be a serious matter, however, if for this reason 
the original juridical character of this faculty should be 
abandoned, and if gradually and by preference it should be 
allowed to merge into a sociological faculty. If there is 
apportioned to this faculty the study of all that originates 
the social life of man, makes it real, and belongs to its 
nature in its broad extent, then ethics would gradually 
claim a lodging with it, the life of science and art would 
come under its care, pedagogy would have to recognize its 
authority, and the technique also of agriculture, commerce, 
and of trade would partly come under its rule. It is 
necessary, therefore, to limit the object of this faculty by a 
more accurate definition, and that closer definition can be no 
other than that this faculty is concerned with human society 
only in so far as this calls out the Jural Relationships. Thus 
authority will ever be the characteristic of this faculty, 
since authority alone is able to verify these Jural Relation- 



Chap. IVJ § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 203 

sliips as Law, to maintain them where they are normal, to 
modify them where they are abnormal, and, where they are 
still undeveloped, gradually to cause them to emerge. This 
is as valid for the Jural Relationships between the magis- 
tracy and their subjects as for the Jural Relationships of 
these subjects mutually, and of the nations at large. The 
sociological and economical studies in this faculty are not 
charged with tracing abstractly the organic relation among 
people at every point, nor yet with viewing from every side 
the relation between our human social life and property ; 
but it is their exclusive task to obtain such an insight into 
this twofold and very important relation as shall interpret 
the Jural Relationships it implies, and shall discover to the 
magistracy what in this domain it must and must not do. 

In fact, the study of the Juridical faculty will always 
be governed by the principles professed with reference to 
autliorlty. If authority is considered to have its rise from 
the State, and the State is looked on as the highest natural 
form of life in the organism of humanity, the tendency 
cannot fail to spring up to deepen the significance of the 
State continuously, and even to extend the lines of authori- 
tative interference, which Plato pushed so far that even 
pedagogy and morals were almost entirely included in the 
sphere of the State. Indeed, more than one sociologist in 
the Juridical faculty is bent upon having his light shine 
more and more across the entire psychical life of man, in 
the religious, ethical, sesthetical, and hygienic sense. If 
sooner or later the chairs of this faculty are arranged and 
filled by a social-democratic government, this tendency 
will undoubtedly be developed. If, on the other hand, it 
is conceded that authority over man can rest nowhere 
originally but in God, and is only imposed by Him upon 
men with regard to a 'particular sphere^ this impulse to 
continuous extension is curbed at once, and everything that 
does not belong to this particular sphere falls outside of the 
Juridical faculty. In the moral life, which is not included 
here, God himself is the immediate judge, who pronounces 
sentence in the conscience and various temporal judgments 



204 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

in the world, and who will utter final judgment in the last 
day ; while public authority must appoint law only upon 
the earth, and must pronounce sentence as judge upon 
that alone which can be legally established and maintained 
in the external relations of life by compulsion. Hence ethics, 
as touching the relation of man in foro interno, will remain 
in the Theological and Philological faculty ; pedagogy, as 
bearing upon the psychic life, belongs in the Philological 
faculty ; hygiene remains with the Medical ; the material 
side of property finds its study in the faculty of Natural 
Philosophy ; while all that touches the real technics is 
treated by the Artes and not by the Scientice. Thus the 
Juridical faculty stands in organic relation to all the others ; 
it cannot forego the assistance of any ; it must borrow data 
(Lehnsatze) from all ; but it does not lose itself in these 
studies, while the object of its own science is the social 
life of man, not as abandoned to whim or accident, but as 
governed by an authority, and thus bound to a law, w^hich 
is indeed framed by man, but which finds its deepest ground 
and iience its binding rule in Him who created this human 
social life, and who, in the interests of its outward relations, 
on account of sin, conferred authority upon man over man. 

The science of Law, therefore, is not only to shed light 
upon the relation of the magistrate and the subject (public 
law and penal law), upon the relation of citizen to citizen 
(civil law, commercial law, etc.), and upon the, relation of 
nation to nation (international law); but, before all this, it 
must develop the idea of Justice itself, so that it can be well 
understood at what view-point it takes its stand^ and accord- 
ing to what rule the development of law must be guided. 
To accomplish this, it cannot rest content with the investi- 
gation of existing Jural institutions, their comparison with 
others, and a study of their historical origin. All this can 
never effect more than the knowledge of formal law; while 
Justice exhibits itself in its majesty only when it obtains its 
adamantine point of support in our psychical existence, and 
of necessity flows from what, to our deepest sense of life, is 
highest and holiest. The question whether one worships 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 205 

tliis highest and holiest in the living God, or whether it is 
sought in the pantheistic idea, or in the pressure of natural 
life, determines, really, the entire course of our further studies. 
But in any case the science of law must fix its point of de- 
parture, formulate its idea of justice, and make clear the vital 
principle of law. To do this it must borrow its data from 
Theology, Psychology, and Philosophy in the general sense, 
but by a proper Philosophy of law it must work out these bor- 
rowed data independently with a view to Justice, and unite 
them organically into one whole, in which the self -conscious- 
ness of Law expresses itself. The Encyclopedia of the science 
of law does not preclude the necessity of a separate study of 
the philosophy of law. For the object of Encyclopedia is not 
law itself, but the science of law, and though it is self-evident 
that there can be no exposition of the science of Law as an 
organic whole without due consideration of the questions 
Avhat law is, what law is born from, and how we can learn 
to understand law, yet the answer of these does not rest 
with the Encyclopedia, but is accepted in the Encyclopedia 
as already determined ; and this is only possible when in the 
organism of the Science of law the Encyclopedia also finds 
the Philosophy of law, with its results. 

By this we do not detract in the least from the signifi- 
cance of the historical study of law. That historical study 
includes by no means merely the explanation of existing Ju- 
ral institutions in their origin, but at the same time points out 
the forms which the character of our human nature, in con- 
nection with national and climatic differences, have given to 
law, and according to what process these forms have devel- 
oped themselves one from the other. It also appears from 
these historical studies, that the development of law has been 
more normal in one direction, and that in definite circles the 
development of law has exhibited a classical superiority. 
What we contend is, that no criticism or even a mere judg- 
ment is possible, unless a critic is present subjectively in the 
investigator, and the authority which gives law its sanction 
determined in advance. Even where this criticism is rejected 
from principle, and in a pantheistic sense the distinction be- 



206 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

tween right and wrong is actually abolished, in order to recog- 
nize law only in that which is in force as such as long as it 
maintains itself, there is a premise already in this, and back 
of this premise an entire system, that dominates our entire 
science of law. Even where one eliminates the Philosophy 
of law, the start is made insensibly, i.e. without a clear 
self -consciousness, from a point which the Philosophy of law 
alone can scientifically justify ; and for this reason the omis- 
sion of this study is at heart an insincerity. 

Concerning the grouping of the several departments of 
study in this faculty, no one will longer defend the method 
of Kirchner of placing the fountain-studies, such as herme- 
neutics, criticism, and diplomatics in the foreground as the 
exegetical group. These are simply not juridical departments, 
but philological, and are here specially applied to documents 
of juridical contents. In this faculty also the grouping 
should derive its principle of division Qprincipium divisionis) 
from its object, and hence this principium can only lie in 
the several elements, among which the Jural relationships 
are observed, i.e. government and subject, people and peo- 
ple, citizen and citizen. The fourth relation, God and 
Sovereignty, we purposely omit, because law also runs its 
course where this relation is not recognized or is even 
denied, and where the prerogative of Sovereignty is ex- 
plained in other ways. From this, however, it follows that 
the three lines of relations which we have named form only 
the particular part in the juridical science, and that these 
three studies, which together form the particular part, must 
be preceded by a general part on Law as such. This general 
part should embrace the two departments : (1) The philoso- 
phy of Law ; and (2) the history of Law ; to which, for rea- 
sons fully developed above, Encyclopedia can be added 
(although, even as with the other faculties really a philo- 
sophical study), in an irregular way. Of course it is not 
denied that the three portions of the particular part have 
each a history of their own, but we are so fully convinced 
of the common fundamental trait which dominated these 
parts in every period and with every people, that Roman 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 207 

law, Germanic law, etc., are generally spoken of in an uni- 
versal sense. Upon this general part follows the particular 
part, which falls into three : Public law. International law. 
Civil law, each with their auxiliary sciences. Public law 
divides itself again into public law in the narrower sense 
and Penal laAV, and to penal law the theory of procedure is 
added as a subdivision. Those which, on the other hand, are 
taken separately as political sciences, i.e. statistics, econom- 
ics, politics, diplomatics, sociology, etc., are only auxiliary 
sciences which keep public law especially, but civil law also 
in part, from feeling their way at random, and help them to 
walk in the broad light of the knowledge of facts, condi- 
tions, and relations. The difference is that in olden times 
the unconscious life was stronger, and hence also the sense 
of law, since custom of itself determined all sorts of rela- 
tions which now in our more conscious life are only obtained 
as the result of investigation. Of course material goods are 
here considered only in so far as they are subsumed under 
man, and thereby are brought under the conception of law, 
or at least can exercise an influence upon the decision of the 
relations of law. The relation between gold and silver, for 
instance, would of itself be entirely indifferent to the jurist, 
but it becomes of importance to him as soon as the question 
arises, in what way the government in its monetary sys- 
tem is to decide the relation between them. We cannot 
enter into further detail. To analyze more closely the sev- 
eral characteristics of civil law, commercial law, maritime 
law, etc., lies not in our province, and the fact that legal pro- 
cedure, political science, etc., bear less a scientific than a tech- 
nical character is self-evident. Our only purpose has been to 
explain that side of the science of law on which it lies organ- 
ically linked in the organism of general science, and to indi- 
cate the partly sacred character which the Juridical science 
must maintain, for Justitia must remain sancta or cease to be 
Justitia, and for this reason it stands in immediate relation 
to the two great problems, of how authority from God comes 
to man, and whether or no it has been conferred upon man 
simply because of sin. 



208 § 53. THE EIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

The faculty of Natural Philosophy can be considered more 
briefly. There is only one difference of opinion about the 
object of physical science. This arises from the fact that 
the mathematical and arithmetical sciences were formerly 
classed with Philosophy, while at present the tendency is 
stronger to class them with the physical sciences as the sci- 
ences of the relations of physical data. Those who hold 
these relations to be unreal, or at least explain them in the 
main as subjective^ are obliged, for the sake of logical conse- 
quence, to prefer the custom of the old philosophy, and group 
these departments with the psychical studies. Since, how- 
ever, the impression has become more universal that science 
in general and therefore each particular science, must seek its 
strength in the knowledge of the relations even more than in 
the knowledge of the elements among which these relations 
exist, it is not probable that with reference to the disposi- 
tion of Mathematics and Arithmetic the subjective tendency 
will again gain the day. It is entirely true that our human 
consciousness is adjusted to measure and to number ; else 
the most industrious effort would never bring us the concep- 
tion of geometry or arithmetic. It is also entirely true that 
the laws which dominate the combination of measures and 
numbers, or, if you please, the Logica of measure and number, 
must find a point of connection in our human consciousness ; 
else we should never be able to propound or solve an abstract 
problem in mathematics or arithmetic. This, however, does 
not take away the fact that it is the cosmos outside of us 
that first brings measure and number to our consciousness. 
On this ground there seems to be no objection to classing 
Mathematics, Algebra, and Arithmetic as three formal depart- 
ments under the physical sciences. For the material depart- 
ments, however, the principium of division here too lies in 
the object of physical science. This object ascends from the 
elements of nature to the cosmos, and in this ascent it fol- 
lows the scale of the so-called natural kingdoms of our earth, 
and of that which has been observed in the cosmos physically 
outside of our earth. Hence those departments come first, 
which investigate the elements (matter as well as force), and 



Chap. IV] § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES 209 

which are to be embraced under Physics and Chemistry. 
Then come the sciences which investigate certain groups of 
elements in their organic relations, i.e. Mineralogy, Botany, 
and Zoology. After that come the studies which direct 
themselves to our earth as such, Viz., Geology, Geography in 
its broadest extent, and Meteorology. And lastly follows 
Astronomy ; and finally Cosmology^ as embracing the whole. 
Let no one imagine, however, that all these sciences as 
such belong to the so-called exact sciences. No one will be 
able to assert this of Cosmogony, and the evolution-theory 
of Darwin sufficiently shows that natural philosophy cannot 
afford to limit itself to the simple results of weight, number, 
and measure. The simple observation of what one hears, sees, 
tastes, and handles, even with the aid of instrumental rein- 
forcement of our senses, and under proper verification, is 
never anything more than the primitive point of departure 
of all science and stands formally in line with common per- 
ception. Only by the discovery of the laws which exercise 
general rule in that which is particular does this science 
raise itself to its second stadium, and become able to exer- 
cise authority over matter. But though in this way it ma- 
terially aids in establishing the dominion which was given 
man over all created things, and though physical science 
has contributed the valuable result that it has exalted the 
independent human consciousness and has set us free to so 
large an extent from the dominion of matter, it has by no 
means yet satisfied the highest scientific need. As long as it 
knows nothing beyond the several data and the law by which 
these data are governed, the thinking mind cannot rest. It 
searches also after the relations among the several king- 
doms of nature, between our earth and the other parts of the 
cosmos, between all of nature outside of us and man, and 
finally after the origin of nature and of the tie which binds 
us to it, even in our body. These are the points of connec- 
tion between the faculty of Natural Philosophy and the other 
faculties ; and the fact that physical science inclines more 
and more to announce itself as the only true science, in order 
to coordinate man with the objects of zoology, and to explain 



210 § 53. THE FIVE FACULTIES [Div. II 

the psychical life materialistically, shows how ill-advised it 
is to allow this physical science to make only practical ad- 
vances, without attaining encyclopedically to self-conscious- 
ness and giving itself an account of the place w^iich it 
occupies in the great organism of science. A scientific Ency- 
clopedia, worthy of the name, is the very thing it altogether 
lacks ; and only when it makes serious work of this can the 
question be answered, whether as a culminating department 
Philosophy of nature belongs to this faculty. 



If now the outline of the four named faculties has been 
drawn fairly correctly, the question arises whether the 
Theological faculty joins itself to them in organic connec- 
tion, with a proper object, and in good coordination. To 
make this clear it will not do to begin by making the con- 
ception of Theology fluid. All judgment concerning the 
Juridical faculty is rendered impossible so soon as you 
interpret it now as the facultas juris, or legal faculty, and 
again as the facultas societatis, or sociological faculty. Much 
less will a way of escape be discovered from the labyrinth 
on theological ground, if by Theology you understand, now, 
that which was originally understood by it, and again 
supersede this verified conception by an entirely different 
one, such as, for instance, the Science of Religion. The 
study of the nature of Theology is in order in the follow- 
ing division, so that in this chapter we can do no other than 
state the conception which we start out from, and after that 
review the Theological faculty, and in historical connection 
with this determine the place of Theology in the organism 
of science. Because of the importance of the subject we 
do this in a separate chapter. 



CHAPTER V 

THEOLOGY IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE 

§ 54. Is there a Place for Theology in the Organism of 

Science ? 

The raising of this question intends no coquetry what- 
ever with much-boasted "science." The theologian who, 
depressed by the small measure of respect cherished at 
present by public opinion for theological study, seeks favor 
with public opinion by loudly proclaiming that what he 
studies is science too, forfeits thereby his right to the 
honorable name of theologian. Suppose it were demon- 
strated that Theology is no science, but that, like the 
study of music, it is called to enrich our spiritual life, 
and the consciousness of that life, in an entirely different 
way, what would this detract from its importance? Does 
Mozart rank lower than Edison, because he did not work 
enchantments, like Edison, with the data of the exact 
sciences? The oft-repeated attempt to exclude Theology 
from the company of the sciences, and to coordinate it, as 
something mystical, rather with the world of sounds, was in 
itself entirely praiseworthy, and has commanded more respect 
from public opinion in general than the scholastic distinc- 
tions. If thus it should be shown that Theology has no 
place in the organism of science, it would not lower it in the 
least, even as, on the other hand. Theology would gain no 
merit whatever from the fact (if it be proved) that it has 
its rank among the sciences. In no case may Theology 
begin with renouncing its own self-respect. And those 
theologians who are evidently guilty of this, and who, being 
more or less ashamed of Theology, have tried, by borrowing 
the scientific brevet, to put it forth in new forms, have been 
punished for their coAvardice. For the non-theological science 

211 



212 § 54. IS THERE A PLACE FOR THEOLOGY [Div. II 

has compelled them to cut out the heart of Theology, and to 
transform it into a department of study which shall fit into the 
framework of naturalistic science. Hence we definitely de- 
clare that our defence of the scientific character of Theology 
has nothing in common with this questionable effort. No 
Calvinist takes part in the renunciation of our character as 
theologians. And now to the point. 

When treating of the historical development of the facul- 
ties it was shown that the general organism of science allows 
itself to be analyzed into its parts along plain and clearly 
discernible lines. Thinking man distinguishes in himself 
first between that which relates to his inner or psychical^ 
and outward or somatical, existence. He distinguishes in 
the second place between his own personal existence and his 
social life with others^ as far as this is not governed by the 
personal existence of the individuals. And in the third place 
he distinguishes between human life and the life of nature. 
This division comes of itself, is unsought, sees itself justi- 
fied by the history of the faculties, and is in entire agree- 
ment with the needs of practical life. Now the question is 
whether, along with these four, there remains yet a fifth inde- 
pendent part or organ in the organism of science. And the 
answer lies at hand, that a final distinction still remains, 
even the distinction between man and his God. Thus 
in the complete object of science we have four antitheses 
and five independent parts: (1) God and his creation; 

(2) in that creation the rest of creation and man; (3) in 
man first the distinction between his material and spiritual 
existence, and, again, (4) the antithesis between unity and 
multiplicity. Or, if you please, five independent and yet 
organically connected objects present themselves to think- 
ing man, viz. : (1) his God, (2) his psychical existence, 

(3) his somatical existence, (4) his existence as a member 
of humanity, and (5) nature outside of man. This divi- 
sion corresponds fully to the Theological faculty (object: 
God), the Philological (the human soul, -^1^%^), the Medical 
(the human body, o-oofjia'), the Juridical (the legal relation- 
ships among men), and Natural Philosophy (the cosmos out- 



CuAP. V] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE? 213 

side of man). And this analysis of the entire organism into 
five parts causes the organic relation among the parts, at 
least in the case of the four faculties already outlined, to 
be clearly discerned, as well in the object itself as in the 
reflection of it in the subject, and develops the subdivisions 
organically in each of the four parts. 

Nothing is gained, on the other hand, by the notion that 
Theology has religious feeling, subjective religion, the phe- 
nomena of piety, etc., for its object, and that for this rea- 
son it is not to be taken as Theology, but as the Science of 
Religion. It is impossible in an organic sense to coordinate 
man's psychical existence, man's somatical existence, man 
as subdivision of humanity, and nature outside of man, and 
then, as a fifth wheel to the wagon, man's religious feeling. 
For this religious feeling belongs to man's psychic existence, 
and the study of it as such tends to investigate the object 
man. Hence the religious feeling cannot be an indepen- 
dent part in the object to be investigated, distinguished 
from the other coordinated parts by an essential difference. 
This religious feeling is very important, and it is certainly 
right to investigate this phenomenon in the life of man 
and of humanity; but this religious life is coordinate with 
his ethical, sesthetical, and intellectual life ; and hence be- 
longs to his psychical existence. In this way these studies 
come of themselves under the Philological faculty, and can 
never occasion the rise of a separate faculty of Theology. 

One objection only can be raised. From the view-point 
of the Trichotomists it can be asserted that man does not 
consist of body and soul^ but of hody^ soul^ and spirit^ and that 
it is therefore entirely rational, by the side of a faculty for 
the body and a faculty for the soul, to place a third faculty, 
which has the spirit (Trvevjjid) of man for its object, and that 
this should be the Theological. Thus next to a Somatology 
and a Psychology, there should also be a Pneumatology as 
"Dritte im Bunde." This objection, however, cannot stand. 
The organism of science cannot be analyzed, or, if you please, 
divided, according to the measure of a distinction accepted 
only by a single school, but disputed by other schools, and 



214 § 54. IS THERE A PLACE EOR THEOLOGY [Div. H 

finding no echo in the universal human sense. With all 
the Reformed we reject the Trichotomy, at least in so far as 
it assumes three substances in man. We are Dichotomists. 
Even if the distinction between soul and spirit (^^vxv ^^^ 
irveviia) were able to maintain itself to a certain extent, 
body, soul, and spirit could never be coordinated. But the 
antithesis should be between body and souU and within 
that soul the distinction between the psychical and the 
pneumatical should be sought. Even they who speak of a 
faculty of the Science of Religion are well aware that nothing 
can be done with the pneuma as such, wherefore they have 
thrown themselves upon religion^ as being a very compli- 
cated expression of life and rich in phenomenal life. The 
pneumatical per se would not be capable of investigation to 
any considerable extent. Hence along this way there is no 
possibility of pointing out a proper ground in the object of 
general science for a science of Theology, and there can be 
no question of a Theological faculty. Both are possible only 
when you come to the antithesis of self-conscious man and 
his Grod^ so that you find the object of your faculty not in 
religion, but in God. 

But even this by itself will not suffice. Not so much 
because it will not answer to coordinate God with the 
incorporeal, with the soul^ the body politic^ or nature. For 
the distinction could well be made between the creator and 
creation., in the creation between man and nature^ and in 
man between his body and soul. This would be no logical 
error. But the difficulty is, that in science, as taken in 
this chapter, man is the thinking subject, and not God; 
that this thinking subject as such must stand above the 
object of science, and must be able to investigate it, and 
to grasp it with his understanding. And this he is well 
able to do with nature^ with our body., soul., and body politic^ 
but not with God, taken as an object of our human science. 
Thinking man, taken as subject over against God as object^ is 
a logical contradiction in terms. It remains an incontestable 
truth (1 Cor. ii. 11) that "the things of God none knoweth, 
save the Spirit of God." Man himself would stand before 



Chap. V] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE ? 215 

US a closed mysterj-, if we were not man ourselves and thus* 
able from ourselves to form our conclusions as to others. 
"For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save 
the spirit of the man, which is in him?" With man, ac- 
cordingly, his phenomenal manifestation may always serve 
us; observation is possible; and the multiplicity of objects, 
through comparison, may bring you to some clue. But 
with God taken as object, all this forsakes us. In the most 
absolute sense. He is univocus. From yourself (at least so 
long as He has not Himself revealed to you the creation 
after His image) you can conclude nothing concerning 
Him; neither can you see or hear or perceive Him in any 
conceivable way. For which reason it is entirely logical 
that the naturalistic tendency in science has not hesitated 
to cancel Theology, and that the Free University at Brus- 
sels, and after her more than one university in America, 
have opened no faculty, or "Department," as it is called in 
America, for Theology. We can also understand that the 
Theologians who have broken with Special Revelation have 
refused to walk any longer in the old paths, have abandoned 
God (o ^eo?) as object of science, and have declared: We 
can investigate religion., but not God. And no fault could 
have been found with this, had they faced the consequence 
of this metamorphosis of the object, and after the demoli- 
tion of the Theological faculty transferred their study of 
religion to the Philological faculty. 

Something very different presents itself, on the other 
hand, when the old definition is readopted, that the science 
of Theology finds its object of investigation in the revealed, 
ectypal knowledge of Grod ; which definition we hold our- 
selves, but which can be explained only in the following 
chapter. It is enough here to recall that, according to 
this representation, God alone knows Himself (" archetypal 
knowledge of God," cognito Dei archetypa), and that there 
is no created being that can know aught of Him, except 
He himself reveals something from His self-knowledge and 
self-consciousness in a form that falls within the compre- 
hension of the creature ("ectypal knowledge of God," cog- 



216 § 54. IS THERE A PLACE FOR THEOLOGY [Div. II 

nitio Dei ectypa). Had this revelation, now, taken place in 
the form of complete analysis and synthesis, it would satisfy 
at once the most rigorous claims of our scientific Avants, and 
would simply have to be inserted into the result of our other 
scientific work; just as in an historical sketch of an event, 
in which you yourself have played an important role, you 
simply insert and embody without further examination that 
which you yourself have planned and achieved, because you 
know your personal part in a way which does not provoke 
a closer investigation. Such, however, is not the character 
of this revelation, for it presents itself in such a form that 
all sorts of data are given, from which you are obliged 
to frame the result. Understood in this way, the com- 
plex of all that belongs to this revelation forms an object 
which, in its starting-point and end, is a unit (einheit- 
lich); which invites investigation; and which by scientific 
effort must be transposed into a form that shall satisfy the 
claims of our human consciousness. Suppose that still more 
Egyptological discoveries were to be made, and, what is not 
impossible, that a number of inscriptions and communica- 
tions were brought to light concerning a thus far lesser 
known Pharaoh; that monuments of his activity were un- 
earthed; and that you were supplied with all sorts of 
letters, statistics, and records of his reign; all these dis- 
coveries would invite and enable you scientifically to ex- 
plain the historical phenomenon of this prince. Then, 
however, the object of your investigation would still be 
Pharaoh himself, and not the knowledge of his person, 
simply because all these monuments and documents were 
not erected and written by him for the sake of giving you 
a specially intended representation of his person. But now 
imagine the other case. Suppose that an Eastern despot 
had purposed to hand down to succeeding generations, a 
particular representation of his person and work, which 
did not correspond to reality, and to this end had prepared 
numerous monuments and documents; then from these his 
real figure in history could not be known, but only that 
representation of himself which he had intended. And the 



Chap. V] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE ? 217 

object of your investigation would not be that despot him- 
self, but "the knowledge of his person," such as he had 
purposed to hand down to posterity. And this is the case 
here. God has not unintentionally left behind Him traces 
of His works and revelations of His thoughts in monuments 
and documents, from which we are to search outw^ho God is. 
But purposely, and fully conscious of what He was doing, 
the Lord our God has imparted a knowledge of His Being 
such as He desired that this knowledge should be. And 
He has done this in such a way that this revelation does not 
contain His absolute image, but conveys this knowledge in 
that particular form which alone can be of service to you. 
What we supposed in the case of the Asiatic despot to have 
sprung from the desire to have a different image of himself 
outlive him from that which he had exhibited in reality, 
takes place here by means of the third term of comparison 
(tertium comparationis). The image which is purposely ex- 
hibited here is different from the real Being, simply because 
it is only in that definite form, " according to the measure of 
man" (pro mensura hominis), that it can be taken up by us. 
We are therefore fully authorized to say that that which 
presents itself to us in these monuments and documents is 
not the knowledge of the real Being of God, which we are 
to search out from them, but, on the contrary, that in these 
monuments and documents lies an image of God, drawn by 
Himself, such as He desires us to receive. Hence, when 
we investigate these monuments and documents, the object 
which we search out is not the Divine Being, but that 
ectypal knowledge of God^ which is posited in them by God 
Himself, and which corresponds entirely to the character of 
our human nature and our human consciousness. The in- 
vestigation of those monuments and documents, and the 
search after the ectypal knowledge of God contained there- \ 
in, is a scientific task in an equally rigorous sense as, in the 
supposed case, the historic expounding of the image of such 
a Pharaoh or Asiatic despot. 

We admit, of course, that in this section it is only an 
hypothesis that the Lord our God has placed such monu- 



218 § 54. IS THEEE A PLACE EOE THEOLOGY [Div. II 

merits and documents at our disposal, that He has purposely 
hid in them an image of Himself, and that it is possible for 
us to obtain this ectypal knowledge from them. We only 
wanted to render it apparent, that with this hypothesis the 
necessity arises for a peculiar scientific work which does not 
indeed have God for its object, — a thing which cannot be, 
— but His ectypal knowledge ; provided there exists a defi- 
nite circle of phenomena from which, by investigation, this 
object can be known. And if, later on, it can be shown that 
what is here put as hypothesis is true, then in this way we 
have certainly found a Theology whose calling it is to do a 
scientific work, and which as such has a place in the organ- 
ism of science. For this hypothesis itself implies that the 
phenomena from which this knowledge must be drawn, and 
this knowledge itself, must organically cohere with the ob- 
ject as well as with the subject of science : with the object, 
because these phenomena are given in the cosmos and in 
history; and with the subject, since it is only as ectypal 
that this knowledge col-responds to the measure of man. 
And this being so, the founding of a proper faculty for this 
scientific investigation is justified of itself. The object, 
indeed, which is sought in these phenomena cannot be 
brought under either of the four other heads. The phe- 
nomena which must be investigated form an entirely pe- 
culiar group. And the object itself is of such eminent 
importance, that not only the needs of practical life, but 
the incomplete character of all other science, alike render 
the study of Theology necessary. 

One more objection, however, must be met. It might, 
indeed, be said that in § 38 of this volume we designate 
the cosmos as the only object of science ; that except we fall 
into Pantheism, God does not belong to the cosmos, but that 
as the ground of all being and cause of the cosmos. He must 
be sought outside of it; that hence He does not belong to it, 
and that therefore the search after God, i.e. Theology, cannot 
be classed with science. We answer, that this objection 
has no force when directed against our representation of the 
matter. To us, indeed, not the unknown Essence of God but 



Chap. V] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE? 219 

the ectypal revelation (revelatio ectypa) whicli has been 
made known^ is the object of Theology. This revelation does 
not lie outside of, but in the cosmos, and never presents itself 
to us in any but its cosmical form. Without the least 
modification, therefore, of our definition of the object of 
science, Theology, interpreted in this wa}', certainly obtains 
its proper place in the organism of science. And Theology 
extends no further than this. For though the assumption 
of a cosmos implies the confession of a ground of being for 
that cosmos, it is not science, and therefore not Theology, 
but only the mysticism of our inner life, which involves the 
data by which we personally know and experience that we 
stand in communion with that extracosmical ground of 
being. 

§ 55. The Influence of Palingenesis upon our View of 
Theology and its Relation to the Other Sciences 

In the preceding sections the difference has repeatedly 
been shown between the conceptions which, according as 
you reckon with or without palingenesis, you must enter- 
tain of the task of the several faculties and their mutual 
relations. In this closing paragraph this difference is more 
definitely considered. There are two sorts of people, both 
of which claim to be the interpreters of our human race 
in its normal manifestation, and who, because thinking that 
their own apprehension is the scientific consciousness, cannot 
abandon the pretension that the result of their scientific work 
alone leads to the knowledge of the object; which knowl- 
edge is indeed not adequate, but as pure as lies within 
our reach. The difference between these two groups can 
briefly be designated by the word Palingenesis^ in so far as 
this implies, first, the abnormal character of that which has 
not undergone this palingenesis, and, on the other hand, the 
gradual growth into normality again of what exhibits itself 
as fruit of this palingenesis. This accounts for the fact 
that he who not only stands outside of palingenesis but 
also rejects it as a play of th'e imagination, must consider 
everything as normal and can only view the divergencies 



220 § 55. THE INFLUENCE OF PALINGENESIS [Div. II 

or disturbances as necessary stages in the process of de- 
velopment. Hence such an one deems himself authorized 
to draw his conclusions from what exists — both from what 
exists outside of him and from what exists in himself, — and 
to make these conclusions compulsory for all. And from 
this point of view no other method is conceivable. He, on 
the other hand, Avho himself lives in the palingenesis, or who 
at least accepts it as a fact, has eo ipso an entirely different 
outlook upon himself and his surroundings. Palingenesis 
implies that all existing things are in ruins ; that there is a 
means by which these ruins can be restored, yea, that in 
part they are already restored. He neither may nor can, 
therefore, draw compulsory conclusions from what exists 
outside of palingenesis ; there can be no question with him 
of an evolution process ; and for him the necessity of all 
science does not lie in what presents itself to him, but in 
the criticism of existing things by which he distinguishes 
the abnormal from the normal. 

This applies to all the faculties, but becomes more impor- 
tant in proportion as the part of the object which a given 
faculty is to investigate stands higher. With the faculty 
of Natural Philosophy, therefore, this antithesis makes itself 
least felt ; a little more with the Medical ; more strongly 
with the Philological ; almost overwhelmingly with the Ju- 
ridical; but most strongly of all with the Theological faculty. 

If I omit from my calculations the facts of palingenesis 
and sin, then no estrangement from God has taken place ; 
then our understanding has not been darkened ; and no 
disturbance has convulsed nature to cloud the transparency 
of God in the cosmos. And it is equally inconceivable 
that a restoring power should be operative in the world, 
in our heart and in our thought, or that there should be 
a revelation, in facts or in words, which does not coincide 
with the normal process of development. For in this case 
w^e have nothing but progress, continuous gain and clari- 
fying of knowledge. And granted that there is a God and 
that a knowledge of this God seems possible, this knowl- 
edge of God stands infinitely higher in our nineteenth cen- 



Chap. V] UPON OUR VIEW OF THEOLOGY 221 

tury than in the days of Abraham and Moses, of David and 
Isaiah, of Christ and his Apostles. Hence it is from no evil 
intent, at least not among men (of Satan we do not speak), 
but simply the necessary consequence of the lack of a per- 
sonal experience of palingenesis, that, so far from acknowl- 
edging them, modern theological development cannot rest 
until it has dispossessed all religious phenomena of their un- 
common character, and has included them in the scope of the 
normal development of our human consciousness. And it 
is but the consequence of principle, which is compulsory 
from this point of view, that the authority of the Holy 
Scriptures is attacked, and that the conflict against the 
Holy Scriptures must be continued until at length all that 
they offer us is reduced to the proportions of the ordinary. 

And this gives rise to the question whether from this 
naturalistic point of view there can still be a theological 
science, and whether there is still room for a theological fac- 
ulty. This question is not answered by a rehearsal of the 
gigantic labors of modern Theology in breaking down the 
so-called antiquated representations. Breaking down is 
not building up. And though it is indisputably the task of 
science to combat error, it is plain that this negative effort 
does not justify the existence of a faculty. Thus the ques- 
tion should be put as follows : When once the old building 
shall have been taken down entirely, so that without causing 
any more concern, antique Theology, properly catalogued, 
shall have been carefully put by in the museum of scientific 
antiquities, will there then still remain a work of a peculiar 
character like Theology which as such will justify the exist- 
ence of a separate faculty ? And this must be answered in 
the negative. It can be said superficially, that from this 
view-point also the five questions present themselves to the 
thinking mind — concerning his own spiritual and bodily ex- 
istence, and his relation to his fellow-men, to nature and to his 
God ; but — and this is the decisive point — from this point 
of view the very existence of God is questionable. One no 
doubt says there is a God; but another denies it. And among 
those also Avho acknowledge the existence of God, some hold 



222 §55. THE INFLUENCE OF PALINGENESIS [Div. II 

that He can be known, while others dispute it. Suppose it 
were a question whether there are plants, should we be able 
to speak of a botanical science? So long as the existence 
of the object of a science remains uncertain, inquiry may 
take place ; one may sound, feel his way and seek, but one 
cannot investigate. Science with a proper object, and a 
method derived from that object, is still wanting. Hence 
in no case can a complex of sciences be allowed to form an 
independent faculty, on the ground of its organic relation to 
life. As an escape from this dilemma an attempt has been 
made to substitute another object for this science, by placing 
the knowledge of Religion at its disposal instead of the knowl- 
edge of G-od. From now on it is to be called the Science of 
Religion. The existence of religion can in no case be denied. 
In religion we have to do with a notable phenomenon that 
has been observed at all times and among many nations. 
This phenomenon may be investigated and thus theological 
science be revivified. This, however, rests upon a misunder- 
standing. As a subjective phenomenon religion is one of 
the phenomena of man's spiritual existence, and as such it 
belongs to the Philological faculty, and more appropriately 
to history and philosophy. And as no one would think it 
proper to found a separate faculty for aesthetics or ethics, 
it is equally unreasonable to open a faculty for the religious 
life in man (or at least in many men). We do not deny 
that from this point of view also there may be a very ear- 
nest desire to learn what may be known of God in man 
and in nature ; and to the study of religion or of the science 
of religion, to annex another study, which seeks after God, 
feels after Him that it may find Him, tries to prove His 
existence and to establish knowledge concerning Him. But 
he who ignores the facts of the fall and palingenesis, must 
always reckon with the denial of God by so many thou- 
sands, for which reason he can never attain unto a positive 
knowledge, nor ever produce anything that falls outside of 
the scope of Philosophy. From this naturalistic point of 
view the five faculties must be reduced to four. The faculty 
of Theology, whose supposed object must still be sought, falls 



Chap. V] UPON OUR VIEW OF THEOLOGY 223 

away. And everything that relates to religion, in its phe- 
nomena as well as in the postulates that produce these phe- 
nomena, as a department of study, goes to the Philological 
faculty. The so-called history of religions is classed with 
history, more appropriately with the science of countries 
and nations. Religion as a psychological phenomenon is 
relegated to the psychological sciences. And finally the 
assumptions to which religion leads find their place in specu- 
lative philosophy, which here finds a point of support for its 
favorite monistic conclusions. 

This whole matter assumes an entirely different phase, 
however, when palingenesis is taken as the starting-point. 
For then it ceases to be a problem whether there is a God ; 
that the knowledge of God can be obtained is certain ; and 
in the revelation which corresponds to this palingenesis there 
is presented of itself an ohjectum sui generis, which cannot 
be subserved under any of the other faculties ; this im- 
pels the human mind to a very serious scientific investiga- 
tion, which is of the utmost importance to practical life. 
Then every necessary claim, for the emergence of Theol- 
ogy as a proper department of science, is fully met; and 
its right to a special faculty is entirely indisputable. He 
who knows from personal experience that there is such a pal- 
ingenesis, and conceives something of the important change 
wrought by this fact in our entire sensibility, cannot remain 
in the suspense of this vague impression, but feels impelled 
to explain it to his consciousness, and to give himself an 
intelligent account of all the consequences which flow from 
it and which are bound to affect his entire world- and 
life -view. And since this fact does not stand by itself in 
him, but corresponds to similar facts in the spiritual exist- 
ence of others, and to analogous facts in the cosmos and in 
history, the demand of the human spirit is absolute, that 
these facts, in him as well as outside of him, must be in- 
vestigated and placed in relation and in order. And this 
no other science can do ; hence a special science must be 
found to do this ; since the object to be investigated bears an 
entirely independent character. The further exposition of 



224 § 55. THE INFLUENCE OF PALINGENESIS [Div. II 

this will be the task of the following chapters. But at this 
point let us briefly consider the relation which, from the 
view-point of palingenesis, must exist between the Theologi- 
cal faculty and the other faculties. 

All prosecution of science which starts out from natural- 
istic premises denies the subjective fact of palingenesis, as 
well as the objective fact of a special revelation, which 
immediately corresponds to this. Even though the incon- 
sistency is committed of maintaining from this point of view 
a Theological faculty, no influence worth the mention can 
ever be exerted by this faculty upon the other faculties. 
Religion, which as a phenomenon is the object to be inves- 
tigated by this faculty, is and remains an expression of the 
life of the emotions, which, however strong its hold may 
be upon life, either remains unexplained, or allows itself to 
be classed in the common scope. Alongside of the ethical 
and aesthetical life, there is also a religious life ; but the 
study of that religious life imposes no claims upon the 
studies of the other sciences, nor does it exercise an influ- 
ence upon their methods. 

This, of course, is altogether different, when in palin- 
genesis we recognize a critical and a restorative fact, which 
both subjectively and objectively places all things, along 
with their origin and issue, before us in an entirely differ- 
ent light. In the Holy Scriptures palingenesis is a general 
conception, which is applied to the subject of science (vide 
Tit. iii. 5), as well as to the object of science (vide Matt, 
xix. 28). It assumes a first genesis, which by a departure 
of the process of life from its principle has led to death, and 
now it declares that a repetition of the genesis takes place, 
but this time as a springing up again of that which went 
down, and that in this restoration the method of genesis 
repeats itself, viz. the development from a germ. This is 
applied to man in all his inward life, but will sometime be 
applied as well to man's somatical existence, as to the whole 
cosmos outside of him, as far as this also has shared in the 
false process. Hence palingenesis is now operative in the 
human mind ; and, analogous to this, palingenesis will here- 



Chap. V] UPON OUR VIEW OE THEOLOGY 225 

after appear in the somatical and cosmical life. This palin- 
genesis is introduced spiritually by an act of God's Spirit 
in the spiritual life of humanity (inspiration in its broadest 
sense), and somatically by an act of the power of God in the 
natural life of the world (miracles in their widest interpre- 
tation). From which it follows that all study of science, 
where the investigator occupies the view-point of palingen- 
esis, must reckon with the four phenomena: (1) of personal 
regeneration ; and (2) of its corresponding inspiration ; 
(3) of the final restoration of all things; and (4) of its 
corresponding manifestation of God's power in miracles 
(^NipJiledtK) . These four phenomena have no existence to 
the scientist who starts out from naturalistic premises. On 
the contrary, his principle and starting-point compel him to 
cancel these phenomena, or, where this is not possible, to ex- 
plain them naturalistically. He, on the other hand, who has 
personally been taken up into this powerful, all-dominat- 
ing activity of palingenesis, finds his starting-point in these 
very phenomena, and mistrusts every result of investiga- 
tion which does not entirely correspond to them. If now 
this palingenesis applied only to the religious life, one could 
say that the faculty of Theology alone is bound to deal with 
it. But this is not at all the case. Palingenesis is a uni- 
versal conception which dominates your whole person, and 
all of life about you ; moreover, palingenesis is a power that 
exerts an influence not merely in your religious, but equally 
in your ethical, sesthetical, and intellectual life. A Jurist, a 
Physician, a Philologian, and a Physicist, who have person- 
ally come under the action of this palingenesis, experience 
its influence as well as the Theologian, and not only in 
their emotional but in their intellectual life. This, indeed, 
has been too much overlooked in earlier periods ; where- 
fore the consequences of palingenesis have been looked for 
in Theology alone, and thus the mischievous demand has 
been imposed upon the other sciences that they should 
subject themselves to the utterances of Theology in those 
points also which did not pertain to its object of investiga- 
tion. The Reformed alone have established the rule with 



226 § 55. THE IKFLUENCE OE PALINGENESIS [Div. II 

reference to tlie magistracy, that it should not ask the 
Church to interpret God's ordinances regarding the duties 
of its life, but that the magistrates should study them out 
independently for themselves from nature and from the 
word of God. In this way homage was paid to the prin- 
ciple that every one who shares this palingenesis should 
exercise independent judgment in all his own affairs. If 
this principle, which is the only true one, were applied to 
all the sciences, it would readily be seen that Theology is 
by no means called upon to arbitrate in every domain of sci- 
ence ; while, on the other hand, also, it would be seen that 
a twofold study must develop itself of all the sciences, — 
one, by those who must deny palingenesis, and the other 
by those who must reckon with it. 

This, however, does not take away the fact, that the other 
sciences must leave Theology the task of investigating palin- 
genesis. For this is its appointed task. Theology alone is 
called to do this. If there were no palingenesis, there would 
be no other than a natural knowledge of God, which belongs 
in the Philological faculty to the philosophical, and more 
especially to the psychological and ontological, sciences. 
Since, on the contrary, palingenesis has come in as an uni- 
versal phenomenon, dominating all things, a faculty of its 
own had to be created for Theology, and it is the task of 
Theology to take the four above-mentioned phenomena as 
the object of its independent investigation. It must exam- 
ine : (1) inspiration, as the introductory fact to psychical 
palingenesis; (2) the psychical palingenesis itself; (3) the 
manifestation that operates introductory to the cosmical pal- 
ingenesis ; and (4) the cosmical palingenesis. Later on it 
will be shown why this entire study must be drawn from 
the Holy Scriptures as the principium of Theology, and how 
it owes its unity just to this common principium. For the 
present, let it suffice that we simply assume this as a fact, and 
conclude from it that the investigation here to be instituted 
forms a special, well-defined ground, and that the other facul- 
ties must leave this investigation to Theology. And as, in 
virtue of the mutual relations of the sciences, one adopts 



Chap. V] UPON OUR VIEW OF THEOLOGY 227 

its borrowed data (Lehnsatze) from the other whenever it is 
necessary, so that the Juridical science, for instance, does not 
compose a psychology for itself, and does not teach a physics 
of its . own in economics, but borrows as much material as it 
requires from the philological and physical sciences ; so also 
is the relation here. No one of the other faculties can insti- 
tute an investigation of its own of palingenesis, but must 
borrow its data for this from Theology. And as to their 
own ground of investigations, they operate from the con- 
sciousness of palingenesis, as far as this refers to their own 
department ; and they cannot rest until with their own 
method they have brought the insight and the knowledge of 
their own object into harmony with the study of palingenesis. 



DIVISION III 
THEOLOGY 



-o-oJ^OO- 



CHAPTER I 

THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 

§ 56. The Name 

In the answer to what we are to understand by Theology, 
even the name is in our time too superficially explained. 
The reason is that men are in some perplexity about the 
name. Having broken away from old-time Theology, and 
having displaced it by something else, the old name is 
merely kept to maintain in a moral and formal sense an 
hereditary right to the heritage of Sacrosanct Theology. 
This is only arbitrary, unless one can prove, genetically at 
least, his relation to old-time Theology. If this cannot be 
done, it does not infringe the right to abandon what has 
become unfit for use, and to replace it by a new complex of 
studies entirely differently understood, but in that case the 
old name should be discarded. For then the name becomes 
a false label, and its retention would be dishonest. Our 
going back to the name of Theology is therefore no anti- 
quarian predilection, but is demanded by the method that 
must guide us in defining the conception of Theology. The 
effort more and more put forth in the second half of this 
century, either in the psychologic-empiric line of Schleier- 
macher, or in the speculative track of Hegel, or in both, to 
form a certain idea of the departments taught in the Theo- 
logical faculty, to translate this idea into a conception, and 

228 



Chap. I] § 56. THE NAME 229 

to take this conception as the definition of Theology, is a 
method which can stand no testing, because in this way the 
certainty that the object of this science remains the same 
is altogether wanting. In his Cratylus Plato does not 
say in vain: "To teach a thing rightly it is necessary first 
to define its name." Even in itself, therefore, a study of 
the name of Theology is demanded ; but this is much more 
necessary now since a genealogical proof must be furnished 
by those who claim hereditary right, and this hereditary 
right to the Theological inheritance must be disputed with 
more than one contestant. 

For the right understanding of the name Theology the 
etymology and the usage of the word claim our attention. 
With respect to the etymology three questions arise : In 
what sense is -logia to be interpreted ? In what sense ^eo? ? 
And in this connection is 6e6^ to be taken actively or 
passively ? The addition -logia occurs, just as the allied 
terms, in the sense of speaking about something^ as well 
as in the sense of thinhing about something. Aoyelov was in 
Athens what we call the platform, and deoXoyelov was the 
place on the stage from which they spoke who represented 
the gods as speaking. The conception of speaking, there- 
fore, and not of thinking, stands here clearly in the fore- 
ground. In oareoXoyia, (j)vaio\oyCa, and other combinations, 
on the other hand, -logia has the sense of tracing, investigat- 
ing. In itself, therefore, 6eo\o<y(a could indicate etymologi= 
cally the action of a 6eoX6jo^, i.e. of one who speaks about 
God, as well as the thinking about God. The only thing that 
serves as a more precise indication here is the age of the word 
and the object to which -Xoyia is coupled. The root of Xeyeiv 
(to speak) with Homer almost always means " to gather," 
with or without choice. Only later on it obtains the sense 
of speaking. And only later still, in its last development, the 
utterance of the thought is put in the background, in order to 
cause the thought itself to appear in the front. Since now 
the word OeoXoyia occurs already in Plato, the first under- 
standing of -Xoyia has the choice ; a choice which is con- 
firmed by Plato's own words. In his de Be Publ. Lib. II., 



230 §56. THE NAME [Div. Ill 

p. 379% he writes : " We, O Adimantos, are at this moment 
no poets (TTOtT^rat), but speak as founders of a city (olKiaral 
TToXect)?), and as such we should understand the forms (tvitol) 
in which the poets must tell their legend." The question 
is then asked, " What should be the forms (types) of Theol- 
ogy ? " upon which the answer follows that the gods must 
be proclaimed as they are, whether they are spoken of in 
"epics, in lyrics, or in tragedy" (iv eirecn, ev fieXeaiv or iv 
rpaycpSio). This statement admits of no doubt. In this 
place at least -Xoyta is used in the sense of speaking. And 
with reference to its composition with ^eo-, it is evident 
that the idea of investigating the being of God must have 
originated much later than the necessity of speaking about 
the gods. Hence our first conclusion is that -Xoyia in this 
combination was originally used in the sense of speaking. 
The second question, what Oeo- in this combination means, 
the gods in general or the only true God, can likewise be 
answered by the above citation from Plato. Plato himself 
interchanges ' theology ' with a speaking of the gods in 
epics, in lyrics, or in tragedy. Concerning the third ques- 
tion, however, whether in this combination Oeo- is object or 
subject, we must grant the possibility of both. In OeoB6cno<i, 
Oeo/jLTjvca, OeoKparla^ Oeo/cpLata, deoyafiia, Oeoirpa^ia^ OeoirpoTrla^ 
etc., a god is meant who gives, who is angry, who rules, 
judges, marries, acts, speaks, and thus Oeo- is the subject. 
On the other hand, in Oeoae/SeLa^ Oeofxifirja-La^ 6eoic\vT7]aL^^ 
BeoXarpeia^ etc., it is a god who is feared, imitated, in- 
voked, and honored, hence Oeo- is the object. %eo\oyCa^ 
therefore, can mean etymologically the speaking of God, 
as well as the speaking about God. Or if you take 
OeoXoyca in the later sense of knowledge, then it indicates 
a knowledge which God Himself has, as well as a knowledge 
which we have of God. Finally, in the last-mentioned sense 
Oeo\6yo<^ seems to be older than OeoXoyelv, and it appears 
that OeoXoyelv as well as OeoXoyCa are derived from it. The 
result therefore is that Theology etymologically is no com- 
bination of Oe6<; and X6yo<;, but means originally a speaking 
of or about a god or gods ; and that only with the further 



Chap. I] § 56. THE NAME 231 

development of the word logos^ which at first indicated a 
collected mass, then a word, and only later reason or thought, 
^€0X0709, OeoXoyelv^ and 6eo\o<yCa also were conceived as a 
knowledge of or concerning a god or the gods. 

Since the etymology admits so many possibilities, the 
more accurate knowledge of the term "Theologia" should be 
gleaned from the usage of the word. With Lucian and 
Plutarch 6eo\6jo^ occurs in the general sense of one who 
treats of the gods, and. Augustine declares in de Civ. Dei, 
XYIII., c. 14: "During the same period of time arose the 
poets, who were also called theologians, because they made 
hymns about the gods." With Aristotle deoXojelv indi- 
cates, to be a theologian, or to act as a theologian. '^ino-TTJiinj 
OeoXoyLfci] means with Aristotle (^Metaph. X. 6) a knowledge 
concerning the divine ; while with Plato, " theology " occurs 
as a speaking about the gods, and with Aristotle in the 
plural number, "Theologies" were investigations into divine 
things (Metereol. 2. 1). Thus far in all these combinations 
the general conception was implied of engaging oneself with 
the matter of the gods or deity, either in consultation with 
tradition, or in reflection for the sake of a more accurate 
understanding. With the name "Theology," this general 
conception has been adopted by Christian writers, modified 
according to the requirements of their point of view, and 
carried out upon a large scale. He who reads the exhaustive 
explanation of Suicer, Thes. graec, under the words OeoXoyo^, 
OeoXojta, and OeoXoyelv perceives at once how greatly the use 
of these words was increased and how much more deeply the 
thinking consciousness entered into the sense of these words, 
than with the classical writers. That the apostle John was 
early called the Theologian (6 OeoXoyo^}, even in the title of 
the Apocalypse, cannot properly be explained from his refer- 
ence to the Logos in the prologue to his Gospel and in his 
first Epistle ; but indicates that John was esteemed to be more 
versed in the divine mysteries than any other apostle. This 
readily accounts for the fact that he is indicated as such in 
the title of the Apocalypse and not in the title of his Gospel. 
In a like sense all the writers of the Old and New Testaments, 



232 § 56. THE NAME [Div. Ill 

but more especially the prophets and apostles, are called theolo- 
gians. Thus Athanasius says, Oratio de incarnatione Verhi, I., 
p. 62, Tavra Be koI irapa roov avrov tov 'Zcorrjpo^ OeoXoycov av- 
Bp(bv 7no-T€va6at Tt9 BvvaraL, ivrvy^dvcov rol^ i/cetvcjv rypdix/jLaatv ; 
i.e. one thing and another concerning the Saviour you can 
also confirm by an appeal to the theologians if you turn to 
their writings. But shortly after this follows the signifi- 
cance of theological investigations of ecclesiastical questions. 
Thus Gregory of Nazianzus was called "the Theologian," not 
to place him on a level with John, as though to him also divine 
mysteries had been revealed, but because in the treatment of 
dogma he always ascended to God, and thus, as Gregory the 
Presbyter writes, reached the height of dogma (vyjro'i Soyfjid- 
T(ov). (See Suicer, I., p. 1360.) 

If thus the word " theologos " itself admitted of a twofold 
meaning, that of " a speaker in the name of God," and that 
of "a thinker who in his thinking ascends to God," the 
word " theologein " was still more pliable. This also signi- 
fied at first to speak in the name of God; for instance, irepl 
TovTcov Tojv Soyfidrcov OeoXojel 'Hcrata?, i.e. concerning these 
things Isaiah speaks as commanded by God. Secondly, to 
explain any point theologically; for instance, Aoyov elirev Xva 
rrjv reXeiav virap^lv aoi tov ^Irjaov deoXoyrjorrj, i.e. he names 
Christ the Logos, in order to explain the absolute relation 
of Jesus to the very essence of God, — a use of this word 
which already with Justin Martyr obtained more general 
currency to indicate an investigation which was instituted 
with a certain dignity of form. Thus, for instance, in his 
Dial c. Tr, (ed. von Otto, Jense, 1876, I. 400 B), "Do 
you inquire in the spirit of theological discussion why 
one ' a ' was added to the name of Abraham, and ask with 
an air of importance why one 'r' was added to the name 
of Sarah? " (Ata t\ fxev ev dXcjia Trpcwro) Trpocreredr) Ta)*A0paa/ju 
ovofjLarc^ ^eoXo^eZ?, Kal Sia rl ev pa) ro) ^dppa^ ovo/juarL^ 6/jlolco<; 
Ko/jLTToXoyel^;^ ; where from the coupling of KOfxiToXoyelv and 
OeoXoyelv it clearly appears, that in both cases a dignity, a 
gravity, and a rhetoric are implied, which did not corre- 
spond to the unimportance of the question. But besides 



Chap. I] § 56. THE NAME 233 

these two meanings, Avliich ran parallel with those of " theo- 
logos," the great Fathers of the Christological conflict also 
used, in the footsteps of Justin, the word " theologein " in 
the sense of proclaiming one to be God, of announcing one as 
God. Justin Martyr wrote in his Dial. c. Tryph. (ed. von 
Otto, Jense, 1876, I., p. 104 C), with the Messianic prophecy 
in Psalm xlv. 6 sq. in mind, " If, therefore, you say that 
the Holy Spirit calls any other God (OeoXo'yelv) and Lord 
(^KVpcoXoyelv^ except the Father of all the Universe and 
his Christ," — which manner of speech, both by the sense 
and by the addition of /cvpioXoyelv, leaves no doubt but 
that deoXoyelv is taken in the sense of calling one God. 
Thus also we read in Athanasius (Tom. L, p. 1030) : 'Ei^ 
airacnv oh So^d^eTat 6 Trarrjp 6eo\oyov/xevo<;, iv avrol^ So^d^erac 
Kal 6 t>to? Kal TO irvevjjLa to dyLov, i.e. "In all points in which 
the Father is glorified by being spoken of as God, the same 
also takes place with the Son and with the Holy Ghost." 
For the sake of still greater clearness, the word Oeov is even 
added, OeoXoyelv Tiva deov, as for instance, in Philostorgius, 
Hist. Eccl. XIV., p. 103, to ^i(S\iov deoXoyel 6eov top . . . 
SrjfjLLovpybv aTrdvTcov, i.e. This book, the Gospel of John, calls 
the author of all things Grod. Thus also Csesarius, Quest, 
22, p. 44, says of the Christ, " also when he is incarnate, 
nevertheless vtto tcjv 'Trpo(^7)TO}v OeoXoyeiTai^ i.e. is he called 
God by the prophets ; the Latin praedicare Deum,"" And 
finally there was developed from this the more general sig- 
nificance of deifying something or making it to he God. For 
instance, ov irdvTa fcaTa ^vaiv yCveTai., Xva fjur) OeoXoyrjOrf rj 
(f)V(n<; (Chrysostom, V., p. 891), i.e. "It is by Divine appoint- 
ment that all things do not happen in accordance with nature, 
lest nature be taken for God." 

In this way only can we understand the history of the 
word "theology" in Patristic literature. If a theologian 
is one who speaks in the name of God, and theologein 
the act itself of speaking in the name of God, then we 
understand how " Theology " could mean the Old and the Neiv 
Testament : T?}? iraXaia^ OeoXoyia^ Kal Tri<i vea<; OeoXoyia^ ttjv 
^v/jL(f)(ovLav opcjv, OavfjidaeTai ttjv dXTjOeiav, i.e. "Seeing the 



234 § 56. THE NAME [Div. Ill 

harmony of the Old and New Testament, one marvels at the 
truth" (Theodor. Therap, See Suicer, I., p. 1359). For 
the word of God comes to us in these two Testaments. If 
in the second place the word theologein means to explain 
a point so fully as to trace it back to God, then it is clear 
how " Theology " could mean : reduction to the mystery 
of the essence of God. Thus says Theodoret (^Qiicest. in 
Grenes. I., p. 3), rt Bijirore fir) irporeraxe tt}^ tcov oXcov Bt)- 
fjbLovpyLa<; deoXojLav ; i.e. " Why did not Moses preface the 
creation-narrative with an introduction on the mystery of 
the essence of God ? " If, in the third place, " theologein " 
was used in the sense of "to declare some one God," then 
it follows also that " Theology " could signify : the divine 
appellation. Thus says Pachymeres in his note on Diony- 
sius Areopagita (Suicer, I., p. 300), ra /coivok ttj Oeia cf^vaet 
dpfjLo^ovra ovo/jLara yvco/jLevrjv eTrtypdcfiet OeoXoyiav, i.e. the 
names which in general belong to the divine nature, he 
calls theologia unita. And since in the bitter conflict against 
the Arians everything hinged on the point of proclaiming 
Christ as God, "Theology" in this sense became almost 
synonymous with the Deity of Christ. Thus Gregory of 
Nyssa speaks of a /crjpva-aeLV to ixvarrjpLov tt)? OeoXoyla^^ w^itli 
his eye on John i. 1, which thus means to say, " to announce 
the mystery of the Deity of Christ." This Theologia was 
then placed over against ol/covo/juLa as the appellation for 
his human nature. Thus in Theodoret, Comm. in Heh. iv. 
14, p. 414: we ought to know rlva fiev t^? dedXoyia^, riva Se 
Ti}? olfcovofiLa<; ovo/jLara^ i.e. what names belong to his divine, 
mid what to his human, nature. In connection with this, 
*' Theology " was also used in the sense of the " mystery of 
the Trinity." The knowledge of God, Avhich as such was 
the characteristic of Christianity, was contained just in this 
trinitarian mystery. Thus Athanasius, de Definitionihus, 
Tom. II., p. 44 : 'EttI tt}? OeoXoyta^ pLiav ^vcnv ofioXoyov/jiev 
rrj^ ayia^ TptdSof;, Tpel<; S' vTrocrTdaei^^ i.e. " Of the mystery of 
the Divine Being we confess that in the Holy Trinity there 
is only one nature, but a threefold hypostasis." Photius, 
Epist. XXXIV., p. 95, (oaTrep iirl tt)? OeoXoyla^ to Tpeh o/noXo- 



Chap. I] § 56. THE NAME 235 

f>/elv ovaia^ TroXvdeov^ i.e. even as it is Polytheistic to confess 
three substances in the mystery of the Trinity. Theophy- 
lact, Comm. in Matli.^ c. xxviii., p. 185, elircov on Sec jSairTi- 
^ecv et? TO ovofjLa Tt)<? TpLd8o<; ttju deoXoyiav r/fxcv jrapeScoKev, i.e. 
by the command to baptize in the name of the Trinity, 
Christ has revealed to us the mystery of the Divine Being. 
And in like sense Gregory Nazianzen uses the word when 
in Oration L, p. 16, he writes, rpia e<TTi Trepl OeoXoyua^ appco- 
arTrjfMara, i.e. there are three weaknesses with reference to 
the interpretation of the Divine mystery. 

Thus the development of the term Theology is not doubt- 
ful. First the word was adopted from the pagan usage 
to indicate a speaking of the things that pertain to the 
gods or God, whether materially, as declarations of divine 
affairs, or simply formally, as a speaking with dignity and 
with a certain unction. In the conflict about the divine 
nature of Christ the still living Grecian language-conscious- 
ness began to use the term OeoXoyelv actively in the sense 
of calling one God, and thereby OeoXoyia obtained gradually 
the significance of the confession of the Deity of Christ. 
Since the Christological conflict speedily assumed a Trini- 
tarian character, and the confession of the Trinity hinged 
upon the acknowledgment of the Deity of Christ, Theology 
began gradually to be interpreted in the sense of the mystery 
of the Divine Essence as Trinitarian. And finally, by Theol- 
ogy there began to be understood that which is revealed to 
us concerning this mystery, since to this extent only we can 
deal with this mystery. At the point of history when the 
supremacy of the Church was transferred from the East to 
the West, and the living word OeoXoyia was lost in the dead 
barbarism Theologia, this Latin term was understood to mean 
the revealed knowledge of the mystery of the Threefold 
Being of God, and by no means a prosecution of Theological 
departments of study. 

§ 57. Theological Modality of the Conception of Theology 

Thomas Aquinas (^Summa Theol. I. 9, i., art. 7) already 
protested against the abuse of making the nature of Theology 



236 § 57. THEOLOGICAL MODALITY [Bit. Ill 

to consist, not in the knowledge of God, but in the knowl- 
edge of an entirely different object of investigation; and 
thus against those who assigned, not God, but "another 
subject for this science, for example, either things and 
signs, or the works of redemption, or else the whole Christ, 
that is, both head and members"; for, says he, "all these 
are treated in this science, hut according to their order with 
respect to Cfod'' ("aliter assignaverunt huius scientiae sub- 
j'ectum, sc. velres, et signa, vel opera reparationis, vel totum 
Christum, id est, caput et membra," . . . "de omnibus istis 
tractatur in ista scientia, sed secundum ordinem ad Deum^^}.^ 
So far as this protest directs itself against the soteriological 
or Christological interpretation of the science of Theology, 
it is equally pertinent to almost all definitions which in the 
course of this century have been given of the conception of 
Theology. What he says, on the other hand, of Theology 
as a study of the Signa et Res^ refers in part to Peter 
Lombard's Sententiae, but principally to Augustine, who, 
in his Lihri IV. de doctrina Christiana, had followed the 
division into Signa et Res, — a division which Thomas does 
not reject, but which in his view does not define the " sub- 
ject of Theology," or what we would call the object of 
Theology. 

The important interest defended by Thomas in this pro- 
test, a protest to which all earlier Reformed theologians have 
lent their influence, lies in the requirement that the concep- 

1 Scientiae subjectum here stands for what we would call Scientiae ohjec- 
tum. This confusion between the grammatical and the logical antithesis of 
subject and object is to be laid to Aristotle's credit, who took rb viroKelixevov^ 
i.e. the subject, also for to wepl ov 6 \6yos ylverai. Compare Prantl, Ge- 
schichte der Logik im Abendland, Leipzig, 1867, III. 208 : "An unzahligen 
Stellen treffen wir fortan (since Duns Scotus, tl308, who first placed them 
over against each other as termini), bis in das 18th Jahrhundert (d. h. bis 
Alex. Baumgarten) diesen gebrauch der Worte 'subjective' und 'objective,' 
welcher zu dem jetzigen sich genau umgekehrt verhalt : namlich damals hiess 
subjectivum dasjenige, was sich auf das Subject der Urtheille, also auf die 
concreten Gegenstande des Denkens, bezieht ; hingegen objective jenes, was 
im blossen objicere, i.e. im Vorstelligmachen, liegt und hiemit auf Rechnung 
des Vorstellenden fallt." 

See also Rudolph Encken, Die Grimdbegriffe der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 
1893 : Subjectiv-Objectiv, pp. 25 ff. ; and Trendelenburg, Elementa Logices 
Aristoteliciae, ed. VIII., pp. 54, 55. 



Chap. T] OF THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 237 

tion of Theology must not only be construed abstractly logi- 
cally^ but also theologically. Augustine already tried to do 
this, though he rarely used the word Theology to indicate 
the conception intended by us. What in the Western 
Church also was called Theology, he called JDoctrina de Deo 
or Christian Doctrine ; and however strange it may seem, 
by the word Theology Augustine understands the pagan 
rather than the Christian conceptions of the Divine. This 
appears prominently in his Be Civitate Dei, in which 
he (Lib. VI., c. 5 sq., ed. Bened. Bass. Ven., 1797, 
pp. 179-255) discusses the system of Varro, as though 
there were three kinds of Theology: mythology (theologia 
fahulosa'), which lived in tradition and in the theatre; 
natural theology (theologia naturalis), which is found 
in the writings of the philosophers; and State religion 
(theologia civilis), which was maintained by official public 
worship. And it is noteworthy that while continually 
quoting this threefold description of Theology, Augustine 
nowhere places theologia Christiana, or vera, over against 
it, but always speaks of Doctrina Christiana. Once only, 
in caput 8 (p. 203), does he take theologia in its general 
sense, but still not to express doctrina Christiana, but that 
after which the doctrina Christiana seeks. In refuting the 
physiological representations of the philosophers he says: 
"But all these things, they say, have certain physical, 
i.e. natural, interpretations, showing their natural mean- 
ing; as though in this disputation we were seeking physics 
and not theology, which is the account, not of nature, but 
of God." From this we see, that by "Theology " Augustine 
did not understand the study of our science, nor that sci- 
ence itself; by him this was called doctrina; but much more 
the knowledge of God, as the aim of theological study. 

Thus with Augustine already this deeper conception of 
Theology bore a decidedly theological character. This is 
seen in his Lihri IV. de doctrina Christiana, where he goes 
back to God, as Himself the Wisdom (Sapientia), and calls 
Christ, as the Word of God (Verbum Dei), the first way to 
God (prima ad Deum via), and then by the side of the 



238 §57. THEOLOGICAL MODALITY [Div. Ill 

intellectual method of attaining the knowledge of God, he 
also emphasizes the way of contemplation (via contempla- 
tionis) and the seeing of God. Thomas Aquinas also 
occupies this point of view in the main, and in his footsteps 
also Calvin. Thomas' chief work bears, indeed, the title of 
Summa theologica^ but in his introduction he systematically 
treats of the sacra doctrina^ which really is not Theology 
itself, but circa theologiam versatur. Only rarely does the 
word tJieologia occur with him, as, for instance, when in P. 
i. i. Qu. art. 7, ed. Neap., 1762, I., p. 12^ he says: "But in 
this science discourse is chiefly made about God, for it is 
called Theology, as being discourse about God" (" Sed in hac 
scientia lit sermo principaliter de Deo; dicitur enim theo- 
logia, quasi sermo de Deo^''^, Here, however, he gives us 
least of all a definition, but derives an argument from the 
etymology of the word to maintain " God " (o ^eo?) as the 
object of the 'sacred doctrine.' The real conception which 
he attaches to Theology is therefore much more clearly seen 
from what he says concerning faith, hope and love as the 
three virtutes theologicae (see I., secundae, qu. 62, art. i. 
sg.). Let it be noted also that he did not write as the 
title of his work : Summa theologme, but Summa th.Qo\ogica. 
De Moor, in his Comm, in March. ^ Tom. L, p. 9, quotes 
these words of Thomas: "Theology is taught by God, 
teaches of God, and leads to God" ("Theologia a Deo 
docetur, Deum docet et ad Deum ducit ") ; since, however, 
he does not name the place where he found this citation, it 
is not to be verified. In like manner Calvin does not give 
to his dogmatics the title of Epitome Theologiae, but of 
Institutio religionis Christianae, and translates the word 
theologia, which he almost everywhere avoids, by notitia Dei 
(cf. Lib. I., c. i., § i. sq.'). The indexes are not trustworthy 
with reference to this. The index to Thomas as well as 
to Calvin's Institutes gives a meaning to the word Theology 
in which the word Theology itself was used neither by Thomas 
nor by Calvin. 

This distinction, now, which maintained itself for a 
long time between theological science as sacred learning 



Chap. I] OE THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 239 

or instruction (^sacra doctrlna^ institutio)^ etc., and The- 
ology itself as knowledge of Grod (notitia Dei)^ was not 
trivial ; but tended to interpret the conception of Theology 
theologically^ as this theological conception is more precisely 
analyzed into the theologia archetypa and ectypa. And this 
must be maintained. The field of knowledge disclosed 
to us in Theology cannot logically be coordinated with 
the other fields that are investigated by our understanding. 
As soon as this is done, Theology is already robbed of its 
peculiar character, and cannot be interpreted except as a 
part of metaphysics, or as a science whose object of investi- 
gation is the empirical phenomenon of religion, or, more 
precisely, the Christian religion. If, on the other hand. 
Theology is a knowledge which, instead of dealing with 
created things, illumines our minds with respect to the 
Creator, and the "origin and end of all things," it follows 
that this knowledge must be of a different nature, and must 
come to us in another way. The normae that are valid for 
our knowledge elsewhere have no use here; the way of 
knowledge must here be another one, and the character itself 
of this knowledge must differ from all other science. As 
within the boundaries of the finite you must follow a differ- 
ent way to knowledge for the spiritual than for the natural 
sciences, the way to the knowledge of that which transcends 
the finite and lies beyond its boundary cannot coincide with 
the Erkenntnisstheorie of the finite. Hence we have no war- 
rant for making a logical division and saying: Science inves- 
tigates nature, man, and God, and the science which does the 
latter is Theology, simply because the coordination of nature, 
God and man is false. He who views these three as co- 
ordinates, starts out logically from the denial of God as God. 
This was entirely correctly perceived by the Greek Fathers, 
and in the steps of Augustine by the Western Fathers, in 
consequence of which, even though without sufficient clear- 
ness of insight, they refused to place Theology in line with 
the other -logics or -nomies, and demanded a theological 
interpretation of the conception of Theology. The force of 
this theological interpretation was still felt in the second 



240 § 57. THEOLOGICAL MODALITY [Div. Ill 

half of the eighteenth century, whenever the dogmatici de- 
scribed Dogmatics not as a subdivision of Theology or as 
one of the departments of theological study, but as the 
theologia propria, to which exegesis, church history, church 
polity, etc., were added as auxiliary studies. They had 
already lost the conception of Theology to such an extent 
that, although not theoretically, they practically applied the 
name of Theology to the human study which was devoted to 
this revealed knowledge of God ; but from their limitation of 
this name to Dogmatics it was evident that they took this to 
be the study that leads to the right understanding of the real 
knowledge of God. They were not concerned about all kinds 
of learning, but about God Himself, and that alone which 
could bring us a closer knowledge of that God could claim in 
the more precise sense the name of Theology. It is indeed 
true, as is shown by the history of Encyclopedia, that the En- 
cyclopedists gradually began to understand by Theology the 
complex of the several departments of theological study; 
but no one will contend that in doing this they contributed 
to an organic interpretation of the conception of Theology. 
Of Schleiermacher only it can really be said that, seeing the 
unskilfulness of the earlier Encyclopedists, he seriously 
tried to bring Theology, not as a knowledge of God, but 
taken as a theological science, to a unity of interpretation. 
It is too bad that he went to work at this so unhistorically ; 
that he paid almost no attention to the development of the 
conception of Theology in former ages : and still more is 
it a pity that, mistaken in the idea of the object, he could 
not attain to an organic interpretation, and advanced no 
further than to explain it as an aggregate, united by the 
tendency of these several studies to aid in preparation 
for the sacred office. By this he cut off the theological 
understanding from the conception of Theology; and they 
who have come after him have no doubt superseded his 
aggregate by an organic conception, and his exceedingly 
limited object by a broader object, but have not removed 
the breach between what Theology was originally and what 
has since been understood by it. The rule continued to be 



Chap. I] OF THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 241 

derived exclusively from Logica by which to define the con- 
ception of Theology, and thus it was impossible to regain 
the theological conception of this science. This does by no 
means imply that repristination of the former conception 
would suffice. The very contrary will appear from our 
further exposition. All we intend to say, is that here also 
no progress is possible, unless we continue our work along 
the line of those threads that were spun for us in the past. 

And in looking back upon this past we find that in the 
conception of Theology a characteristic theological modality 
exhibits itself almost constantly; by which we mean that 
the peculiar character of Theology has exerted an influence 
also upon the forming of this conception. How far this 
influence extended can only be shown in the following sec- 
tions ; but in order to place the significance of those sections 
in the desired light, it was specially necessary to refer to 
this point. 

§ 58. The Idea of Theology 

He who is called to the fifth story of a large building, 
and finds an elevator, which without any effort on his part 
brings him in a moment where he wants to be, will not 
climb the hundred or more steps on foot. Applied to our 
knowledge, this implies that common, slow investigation, 
with its inductions and deductions, is merely the stairs with 
its hundred steps by which we climb the heights of knowl- 
edge, while the attainment of knowledge is ever the aim in 
view. From which it follows that if that same height of 
knowledge can be reached by a shorter or less laborious 
way, the former stairs become worthless. This is true hori- 
zontally as well as vertically. Since now there are railways 
to all the corners of Europe, no one travels any longer by 
stage-coach. Though there may be a peculiar pleasure 
attached to that slow rate of progress, or rather to creeping 
along the way of knowledge, it is, nevertheless, somewhat 
morbid to abandon for the sake of this lower pleasure the 
much higher delight of the knowledge of the truth. Lessing's 
proverb has led us astray on this point, and therefore the brief 



242 §58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

indication of the only true point of view was necessary. What 
surprises still await us of locomotion by electricity or through 
the air are not easily foretold ; but this is certain, that every 
more rapid communication antiquates the less rapid. This 
compels us in Theology, also, to distinguish between the 
conception and the idea of Theology. The conception is 
bound to the way of knowledge which we travel. The 
idea^ on the other hand, views the end, independently of the 
question of the way by which this end shall be reached. 
This was the distinction in view in the formerly generally 
current division of Theology into a theologia unionis, vis- 
ionis and stadii. This supplied three conceptions, which 
found their unity in the idea of Theology. The theologia 
unionis was that highest knowledge of God, which Christ 
possessed in His human nature, by virtue of the union of this 
nature with the Divine nature. The theologia visionis, also 
called patriae^ was the appellation of the knowledge of God 
which once the elect will obtain in the state of heavenly 
blessedness. And the theologia stadii^ also called studii, or 
viatorum^ expressed that knowledge of God which is acquired 
here upon earth by those who are known of the Lord. 
That which was common to them all, and which united 
these three conceptions, was the general idea of the knowl- 
edge of God. The aim of Theology, therefore, did not lie 
in the theological investigation, neither in all sorts of 
studies and learning, but exclusively in knowing God. All 
study and learning served only as scaffolds for erecting the 
palace of our knowledge ; but as soon as the building was 
finished that scaffolding lost all its meaning, even became a 
hindrance, and had to be cleared away. And this was more 
clearly perceived in olden times, than by most theologians 
after Schleiermacher. The idea of Theology can be none 
other than the knowledge of G-od^ and all activity impelled 
by Theology must in the last instance be bent upon the 
knowledge of God. This is not said in a metaphorical, but 
in a very exact sense. And this must be maintained as 
the idea of Theology, when you come to consider also 
the science of Theology, as it is studied and taught by the 



Chap. I] § 58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY 243 

Theological faculty. B}' a different notion of the idea, and by 
lowering your ideal, you degrade theological science itself. 
According to its idea, Theology does not at first demon- 
strate that there is a God ; but it springs out of the over- 
whelming impression which, as the only absolutely existing 
One, God Himself makes upon the human consciousness, and 
finds its motive in the admiration which of itself powerfully 
C[uickens the thirst to know God. Though Theology may 
be permitted to seek after proofs for the existence of God, 
by which it may open the eyes of those half -blind, it can- 
not itself start out from doubt, nor can it spend itself in the 
investigation of religious phenomena, or in the speculative 
development of the idea of the absolute. It may do all this 
when it is convenient and as a dialectic auxiliary, but all 
this is only secondary ; at most, a temporary bridge, by 
which itself to reach the other side or bring others there, 
but its purpose, wading the mountain stream, remains to 
come to the mountain itself, and in the sweat of its brow to 
climb the mountain path, until at length the highest peak is 
reached, the top itself, where the panorama, the knowledge 
of God, unveils itself. Only when thus interpreted does 
Theology regain its necessary character, and otherwise it 
lapses into an accidental dilettantism. Thus only it regains 
its value, and, apart from every conception of utility or 
eudemonistic purpose, it recovers an absolute significance 
in itself. Thus in its very idea it advances beyond the 
boundary of our present existence, and extends itself into 
the eternal and the infinite. 

The older Theologians derived this more accurate insight 
into the nature of Theology and this necessary distinction be- 
tween the idea and the several conceptions of the one Theology 
from the Holy Scriptures. In the Scriptures " the knowledge 
of God " is clearly stated as the forma of " eternal life," and 
of that knowledge of God several degrees are indicated. 
The distinction is evident at once between the knowledg-e 
of God disclosed to man before he sinned, and that modified 
knowledge of God given to the sinner. There was a knowl- 
edge of God for Him who said : " Neither doth any know 



244 § 58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal him"; and a knowledge of God for those 
who could not attain this save by that Son. And finally in 
the Scriptures a very significant distinction is made between 
the knowledge of God of those who have been "enlightened" 
and of those who still "-'walk in darkness"; between the 
knowledge of God, already obtained here by those who have 
been enlightened, and that which shall sometime be their por- 
tion in the realm of glory. Hence a rich difference of form 
was found in the Scriptures, but still the same idea was com- 
mon to all these forms, which idea was and is : to know Grod^ 
and to know Him as Wjen, For in the Scriptures a knowledge 
of God in the world of angels is also spoken of, which is not 
entirely lost even in fallen angels, so that "the devils also 
believe that there is one God " ; but since this knoAvledge 
assumes another subject, we need not here take it into ac- 
count. This treatise deals exclusively with human Theol- 
ogy (Theologia Tiumana)^ and for the sake of clearness we 
leave the other distinctions alone, in order now to study 
the distinction between our knowledge of God here and in 
heaven (Theologia stadii and patriae). 

The classical proof-text for this is 1 Cor. xiii. 8-13, where 
the holy apostle definitely declares, that the gnosis which we 
now have " shall be done away," since now it is only a know- 
ing "in part"; that in this matter of our knowledge of 
God there is a "perfect" contrasted to that which is now "in 
part " ; that when that which is " perfect " is come, a seeing 
of " face to face" shall come into being ; and that this seeing 
shall be a "knowing even as also I have been known." 
Elsewhere also, in Matt. v. 8, in 1 John iii. 2, in Psalm xvii. 
15, etc., a knowledge of God is mentioned, which shall con- 
sist in a seeing of God; but for brevity's sake we confine 
ourselves to the utterance in 1 Cor. xiii. Two things are 
here included. First, a sharp dividing-line is drawn between 
the knowledge of God which is acquired on earth, and that 
other knowledge of God which is in prospect on the other 
side of the grave. But secondly, the relation is indicated 
which is sustained between these two forms of knowledge. 



Chap. I] § 58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY 245 

Knowledge does not disappear in order to make room for 
sight. It is not a knowing here and a seeing of God 
there. No, it is a knowing both here and there ; but with 
this difference, that here it is " in part " and there it shall 
be "perfect." The seeing, on the other hand, is, here as 
well as there, the means by which to obtain that knowl- 
edge ; here a seeing " through a glass darkly," there a 
seeing "face to face." The holy apostle treats even more 
exhaustively the relation between Theology here and in 
heaven by indicating the analogy of the child that becomes 
a man. The child and the man have both a certain knowl- 
edge, but the knowledge of the child dissolves in that of 
the man. By becoming a man he himself brings the put- 
ting away of that which belonged to the child. Thus the 
unity between the two forms of our knowledge of God is 
most firmly maintained, and both conceptions of knowledge 
emphasized as finding their higher unity in the idea of The- 
ology, which is and always will be : the knowledge of Grod. 
That Paul speaks very expressly here of the knowledge of 
God, and not of " the knowledge of divine things " in gen- 
eral, appears clearly from the /caOoD^ iTreyvcoaOrjv in vs. 12. 
" Knowing even as also I am known " cannot mean any- 
thing save knowing Him by whom I am known. 

The objection also that this future seeing of God is merely 
mystical or contemplative, and that therefore it has nothing 
to do with our logical consciousness, but falls outside of 
Theology, is set aside by 1 Cor. xiii. The logical is not a 
temporal form of our human consciousness, fundamentally 
fictitious, and therefore bound to pass away. But God Him- 
self is logical, for in Him also knowledge is assumed, and 
between our knowledge here and that which shall be ours 
in eternity, there is no essential, but only a proportional, 
difference : now in part, then perfect. Similarly the differ- 
ence between the two modes of knowledge is merely that of 
the immediate and mediate. Then our knowledge will turn 
immediately on God Himself, while now we only observe the 
image of God in a glass, in which it is reflected. Thus the 
continuity of our knowledge of God is not broken by the pass- 



246 § 58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

ing away of present things. When the knowledge "in part" 
shall have passed away, the identity of our consciousness 
shall continue. That same ego^ which now can only faintly 
discern the image of God in a glass, shall presently be con- 
scious of the fact that it knows that selfsame God whose 
image it first saw "darkly," and will recognize in the Divine 
face those very features which formerly it observed in the 
glass imperfectly and indirectly. From this, at least, we see 
that the so-called scientific investigation shall sometime fall 
away; that it bears no absolute character; and that it derives 
its temporal necessity merely from the condition brought 
about by sin, and its possibility logically from " common 
grace" and theologically from the "particular grace" of di- 
vine illumination. And if this is so, it follows of itself that 
scientific investigation can never be Theology, and is only 
an accidental activity amid present conditions and within 
given boundaries, impelled by the thirst after Theology, or 
rather by the thirst after the knowledge of God. Hence the 
higher idea of tJie knowledge of Crod determines Theological 
science and not Theological science the idea of Theology. 
There can, and there will hereafter, be a rich Theology 
without the aid of a Theological science ; while on the other 
hand when Theological science withdraws itself from the 
knowledge of God, it loses all sufficient reason, and can lead 
no other than a nominal existence. 

The naming of the animals by the original man in paradise 
presents a partial analogy. In the domain of zoology, also, 
the real end in view is not scientific study, but knowledge of 
the animal. In our present condition this knowledge cannot 
be acquired except by empirical investigation and the draw- 
ing of conclusions from the data obtained. But if we knew 
and understood the animal at once, this empirical investiga- 
tion and this drawing of conclusions would be purposeless, 
and hence dispensable. And something like this is told us 
in the story of paradise. There was here really a knowledge 
of the animal by the "seeing of face to face." To Adam 
the animals were no enigma as to us, but were known and 
understood by him ; and therefore he could give them a 



Chap. I] § 58. THE IDEA OF THEOLOGY 247 

name according to their nature. Had this capacity remained 
intact in us, zoology of course would have assumed an en- 
tirely different form ; and not in a lesser but in a much 
higher sense it would still have been zoology. For the 
knowledge of animals in paradisaical man was not analogous 
to the vague perception which we now have immediately of 
the world of sounds or of moral phenomena, but it was logi- 
cal ; as is evident from the fact that it led to the giving of 
the name. And in this sense it presents an analogy for 
Theology in its two different phases. Just as now in zool- 
ogy scientific study is indispensable if we would obtain 
a logical knowledge of the animal, in our present dispen- 
sation Theological study is equally indispensable to obtain 
the logical knowledge of God. But as in paradise knowl- 
edge of animals was at the disposal of man without this 
study, in the dispensation of glory man will similarly attain 
a much more complete and yet logical knowledge of God, 
without theological study. This is equally applicable to 
theologia paradisi and tlieologia unionis ; but this we pass 
by because for the sake of clearness we are considering only 
the antithesis between our knowledge of God " in a glass " 
here and " face to face " in glory. 

If it is now plain that the theological idea lies in the 
impulse of our human consciousness to know G-od^ entirely 
independently of the way in which this knowledge is to be 
acquired, our object has been gained. The idea of Theology 
as such is imperishable, but, according to the demands of our 
condition, it leads us by different ways to our ideal. The 
way which we must travel is that of theological study^ and 
the science which is born from this study can with entire 
propriety be called Theology^ provided this is not done in an 
exclusive sense, and this science admits no other motive than 
to know or learn to know Gfod. Every conception of Theol- 
ogy which is not subordinated to the idea of Theology must 
fail. 



2tt8 § 59. THE DEPENDENT CHARACTER [Div. Ill 

§ 59. The Dependent Character of Theology 

If the idea of Theology lies in the knoiuledge of Grod^ an 
entirely peculiar character flows from this for all Theology, 
which distinguishes it from all other knowledge or investi- 
gations of science. For in all other investigations the in- 
vestigating subject places himself ahove the object to be 
investigated, is the active agent in the investigation, and 
directs his course in obedience to his own free judgment. 
And this is both possible and proper with created things, 
because among all these man ranks first. But when the 
thirst for knowledge directs itself to Him to whom man 
and all creation owe their origin, existence, and conscious- 
ness, the circumstances are materially changed. Then man 
stands no longer ahove^ but beneath the object of his investi- 
gation, and over against this object he finds himself in a posi- 
tion of entire dependence. Our earlier Theologians explained 
this by distinguishing between archetypal Theology (Theo- 
logia archetypa) and ectypal Theology (Theologia ectypa) 
— a distinction which as it was finally defended could not 
be maintained, but which contains an element of truth that 
should not be abandoned. For the real thought fundamental 
to this distinction between archetypal and ectypal Theology 
is that all personal life remains a closed mystery to us as 
long as he whose life this is does not himself disclose it to 
us. And this thought must be maintained. We purposely 
limit ourselves to personal life in order to exclude the 
zoological question, even though we readily grant that in 
animals also a similar mystery presents itself; but this 
mystery need not detain us now, because the knowledge of 
man presents already the entirely sufficient analogy for the 
knowledge of God. With man also the rule applies to each 
individual that you cannot know him in his personal exist- 
ence, except he himself disclose the mystery of his inner 
being. 

And yet as far as man is concerned, appearance might 
readily deceive us. We quickly form an idea about the per- 
sons we meet in daily life, and some of us can form a fairly 



Chap. I] OF THEOLOGY 249 

accurate idea of a man at the very moment of meeting". 
Let us observe however : first, that being human ourselves 
we have a means in our own existence by which measurably 
at least to understand a fellow-creature. Were we not our- 
selves man, we would not understand what man is ; as it reads 
in 1 Cor. ii. 11: "For who among men knoweth the things of 
a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?" In the 
second place, this knowledge which we owe to our mutual 
relationship, is strengthened by the fact, that as a rule we 
associate with fellow-citizens, congenial spirits, and those to 
whom we are united by a certain community of lot. Hence 
not only our common humanity, but the fact also that the 
modality of existence is largely common to us all, makes it 
easy from ourselves to form conclusions concerning others. 
How important this factor is, we perceive at once when we 
cross the boundaries of our native land, and especially when 
we come among other races and into entirely different coun- 
tries. A Russ or Finn understands very little of the real 
inner nature of the Red man, and what does a Frenchman 
understand of the inner nature of a Lapp or Finn ? In the 
third place, let it be noted that however much there may 
be something personal in every man, characters divide them- 
selves into certain classes, which are recognized by certain 
combinations of phenomena, so that he who knows one or more 
of these kinds readily understands a great deal of a person, as 
soon as he perceives to what class he belongs. Fourthly, man 
is no spirit but a spiritual being, and exists simultaneously 
psychically and somatically^ so that a great deal of his inner 
life manifests itself without the person being conscious of it ; 
often indeed against his will and purpose. The look of the 
eye, feature and color of face, carriage and manners, compos- 
ure or restlessness in the whole appearance, etc., betray much 
of what goes on in man. To which may be added, in the 
fifth place, that in conversation or in writing a man may say 
to us or to others, something of himself from which very 
important data may be gathered directly or by inference 
concerning the mystery of his person. No doubt there are 
" closed characters," and also " characters that falsify them- 



250 § 59. THE DEPENDENT CHARACTER [Div. Ill 

selves," which you can never fathom, but as a rule you can 
obtain considerable knowledge of a man, even when he does 
not purposely disclose to you the mystery of his person. 

If, now, on the other hand, you turn from the knowledge 
of man to the knowledge of G-od^ you perceive at once that 
almost nothing of these five means of help is at your dis- 
posal. Standing before God you do not find an analogy in 
your own being to His Being, because He is God and you 
are man. The closer knowledge of your fellow-man which 
you acquire from your sharing his modality of existence falls 
entirely away, since the distance between you and the Eter- 
nal Being discovers itself the more overwhelmingly as your 
existence specifies itself. The division into kinds is of 
equally little service, because there is but one God, of whom 
therefore no conclusion can be drawn from the species to the 
individual. Unintentional somatic unveiling is equally im- 
possible with God, since asomatic and only spiritual exist- 
ence characterizes Him as God. And finall}^, the casual 
dropping of a remark does not occur with respect to the 
Eternal Being, since the casual and unconscious doing of a 
thing is not predicable of God. 

The difficulty which the biographer encounters when he 
undertakes to sketch the development of a character that 
belongs to another age, land and surroundings, and of 
which almost no personal utterances are handed down in 
writing, repeats itself with the Theologian, only in an abso- 
lute measure. His aim and purpose is to acquire knowledge 
of a Being which is essentially distinguished from himself 
and from all other creatures ; a Being which, by no amount 
of investigation, he can compel to give knowledge of itself ; 
which as such falls entirely outside of his reach ; and over 
against which he stands absolutely agnostically, in accord- 
ance with the true element of Spencer's Agnosticism. 

Let it not be said, that an infinite number of things are 
manifest and knowable of God, in the works of creation, in 
history, and in the experiences of our own inner life ; for all 
this leads to a certain knowledge of God, only when God has 
begun to reveal Himself to me as a God, who exists and exists 



Chap.1] of theology 251 

as God. Even though for the moment we do not reckon 
with the darkening of sin, all that is called " natural revela- 
tion" would not impart to us the least knowledge of God, 
if it were not willed by God, and as such make an inten- 
tional revelation^ i.e. a disclosure in part of His Divine 
mystery. Suppose that on the fixed stars there lived a 
race of beings, of an entirely different type from what we 
have ever known ; the simple report of what they had 
done would never advance our knowledge of them, as long 
as the idea, not to say every conception, of their kind of 
being were wanting. From the nature of the case this is 
much more forceful with reference to the knowledge of God, 
and the contemplation of visible things would avail us ab- 
solutely nothing, if the sense that there is a God, and of 
what a God is, were not imparted to us in an entirely differ- 
ent way. 

In this sense we speak of a dependent character for Theol- 
ogy. When an absolute stranger falls into the hands of 
the police, which is no infrequent occurrence anywhere, and 
steadfastly refuses to utter a single syllable, the police face 
an enigma which they cannot solve. They are entirely de- 
pendent upon the will of that stranger either to reveal or 
not to reveal knowledge of himself. And this is true in an 
absolute sense of the Theologian over against his God. He 
cannot investigate God. There is nothing to analyze. There 
are no phenomena from which to draw conclusions. Only 
when that wondrous God will speak, can he listen. And 
thus the Theologian is absolutely dependent upon the pleas- 
ure of God, either to impart or not to impart knowledge of 
Himself. Even verification is here absolutely excluded. 
When a man reveals something of himself to me, I can 
verify this, and if necessary pass criticism upon it. But 
when the Theologian stands in the presence of God, and God 
gives him some explanation of His existence as God, every" 
idea of testing this self-communication of God by something- 
else is absurd ; hence, in the absence of such a touchstone, 
there can be no verification, and consequently no room for 
criticism. This dependent character, therefore, is not some- 



252 § 59. THE DEPENDENT CHARACTER [Diy. Ill 

thing accidental, but essential to Theology. As soon as this 
character is lost, there is no more Theology, even though an 
investigation of an entirely different kind still adorns itself 
with the theological name. In his entire Theology the 
Theologian must stand in the presence of God as his God, 
and as soon as for a single instant he looks away from the 
living God, in order to engage himself with an idea about 
God over which he will sit as judge, he is lost in phrase- 
ology, because the object of his knowledge has already van- 
ished from his view. As you cannot kneel in prayer before 
your God as worshipper, in any other way except as depend- 
ent upon Him, so also as Theologian you can receive no 
knowledge of God when you refuse to receive your knowl- 
edge of Him in absolute dependence upon Him. 

This deep sense of dependence has ever induced our real 
theologians, in the days of their power, to place all our 
knowledge of God as eetypal Theology, in absolute de- 
pendence upon the self-knowledge of God, which they called 
archetypal Theology. As the ectype is absolutely depend- 
ent upon the archetype, is governed and formed by it, 
thus, they would say, all our knowledge of God is abso- 
lutely governed by the knowledge which God has of Him- 
self. Thus they taught that we of ourselves can never enter 
into the holy place of the Lord, to examine it and gather 
knoAvledge concerning it, but that it behooves us to take 
our stand on this side of the veil, and to wait for what 
God Himself will communicate to us from this holy place 
and from behind this veil. This revelation or communica- 
tion, which is imparted to our knowledge, we may consider, 
analyze, systematize and cast into the form of our con- 
sciousness ; but in all these operations all active investiga- 
tion after what is God's remains excluded, all knowledge 
remains received knowledge, and it is not God Himself, but 
the knoivledge He has revealed to us concerning Himself 
which constitutes the material for theological investigation. 
Hence eetypal Theology. 

The objection raised against this division and appellation 
cannot stand. It has been said, that in this way we 



Chap. I] OF THEOLOGY 253 

can also speak of an ectypal zoology, botany, etc. For 
these parts of His creation are also known to God before 
they are known to us ; and all our knowledge of the world 
of animals and plants, etc., is either in harmony with the 
knowledge God has of them and then true, or in antago- 
nism with it and then false. This distinction between 
archetypal and ectypal knowledge is valid in every depart- 
ment, and therefore may not be claimed as something char- 
acteristic of Theology. But this objection is altogether 
inaccurate. For instance, I can order a sketch to be made 
of a gable-roof, which upon examination is seen to agree 
entirely with the original drawing of the architect ; but 
does that prove that this last sketch has been copied from 
the original drawing ? No, only if this sketch had not been 
made from the gable, but immediately from the original 
drawing, would it have been ectypal ; but not now. It is 
not true, therefore, that our botanical and zoological knowl- 
edge can be called ectypal. It would be this, if we did not 
draw this knowledge from the world of animals and plants, 
but copied it apart of these realities from the decree of 
creation, as far as it referred to animals and plants. We 
will not stop to consider the question whether our knowl- 
edge of the Avorld of angels, of the soul, of the other side 
of the grave, of the future, etc., is not ectypal ; this ques- 
tion is in order in the section on the ambitus (circle) of 
Theology. It is enough if the essential difference is 
clear between a knowledge which is the result of the 
active investigation of an object, and that wholly different 
knowledge which we must first passively receive and then 
actively investigate. And with the old Theologians we 
maintain the ectypal character of the knowledge of God, 
since no man can investigate God Himself, and all the 
knowledge which we shall have of God can only be a copy 
of the knowledge God has of Himself, and is pleased to 
communicate to us. 

Besides the strictly dependent character of Theology, there 
lie in this ectypal characteristic two suggestions, which must 
be emphasized. First, that there is no involuntary revela- 



254 § 59. THE DEPENDENT CHARACTER [Div. Ill 

tion. This refutes the idea that God may be more or 
less unconscious of Himself, or that He could be seen by 
us in His works, without His willing or knowing it. Since 
this ectypal Theology has its rise only from the fact that 
archetypal Theology imprints itself in it, there is nothing 
in the ectype which was not first in the archetype. Every- 
thing, therefore, from without that mingles itself with the 
ectype and does not come to it from the archetype, is con- 
traband and must be excluded. A child may watch his 
father without his perceiving it or wanting to be watched ; 
a precocious child can sometimes know his father better 
than he can know himself ; but nothing of all this can ever 
take place with reference to God, because all this springs 
from the imperfection of the father or from the superiority 
of his child, and the very idea of God excludes every pos- 
sibility both of incompleteness in God and of superiority 
in His creature. All representations of this sort, therefore, 
which have crept more and more into Theology, must 
be banished as impious, since they start out essentially 
from the exaltation of man above God. The second 
point, which must be emphasized in the ectypal character 
of our knowledge of God, is the truth of our knowledge of 
God. If the ectypal originates by the imprint of the 
archetypal, the ectypal image is no phantasy, no imagination, 
but an image in truth. Just as we saw in the antithesis 
between Theology here and hereafter, that our knowledge 
of God on earth shall then be done away, and rise again 
in a higher form of a knowledge "face to face"; but 
always such, that the truth of our knowledge " in part '*' 
shall be the more fully exhibited by the completer knowl- 
edge in heaven. Our given knowledge of God derives 
from this its absolute character, not as to its degree of 
completeness, but with reference to its connection with its 
object, i.e. with God. God who is, has knowledge of Him- 
self ; and from this self-knowledge God has taken the knowl- 
edge given to us. This excludes not only doubt, but also 
the dilution of subjectivism, as if our formulated statement 
of the knowledge of God in our confession were unim- 



Chap. I] OF THEOLOGY 255 

portant, and without loss of truth could be exchanged for 
every other confession or placed on a line with it. 

Meanwhile we should guard against anthropomorphism in 
our representations of this archetypal knowledge of God. As 
human beings, we do not know ourselves at the beginning 
of our lives , gradually we obtain a certain consciousness 
of our own person, and we frame a certain representation of 
our personal existence and of our inner being. In in- 
timate intercourse we can impart this representation of 
ourselves to others. And in this way it is also possible 
to speak of a certain archetypal and ectypal knowledge of 
our person. But if this were applied similarly to God, we 
would incur a very serious error. We cannot conceive of 
a gradually increasing self-consciousness in God, and con- 
sequently of an existence of God that preceded His con- 
sciousness. Consciousness in God covers His entire existence, 
and the word " eternal " is predicable of both in an intensive 
sense. Hence with God there can be no self-knowledge 
which has been formed in a human way by observation, 
analysis, inference, etc. The self-knowledge in God is sui 
generis, and therefore Divine. If this condemns the admis- 
sion of all anthropomorphism in the archetypal knowledge, 
this mode of representation is equally inadmissible in our 
communication of this knowledge to man. When we com- 
municate something concerning ourselves to another, it is 
man who imparts something to man, and thereby deals 
with analogies that are mutually present, and with similar 
representations which render the understanding of our 
communications possible. All this, however, falls away 
when God approaches man. Then it is not God revealing 
knowledge of Himself to a Grod, but God imparting His 
self-knowledge to man. Moreover, in our communications 
with others concerning ourselves, we are bound to the form 
of thought, and must take the capacity for knowledge as it 
is ; but there is no such limitation with God, who Himself 
created the creature to whom He has determined to impart 
this self-knowledge, and thus was able to adapt this capacity 
for knowledge to His revelation. And, finally, it should be 



256 § 59. DEPENDENT CHARACTER OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

remembered that we can mutually come close to each other's 
heart, but can never penetrate each other's inner selves ; 
while the door to the secret and innermost recesses of our 
being is open to God. 

It was entirely correct, therefore, when in olden times 
it was additionally stated that ectypal Theology reveals 
to us the self-knowledge of God according to our human 
capacity; and that the necessity was felt in the eigh- 
teenth century (see De Moor, Comm. m March. ^ Vol. I., 
p. 29) of limiting archetypal Theology to that self-knowl- 
edge of God, quam creaturae manifestare decreverat, i.e. 
'''"which he had decreed to reveal to the creature.^'' In it- 
self this was correctly viewed; in order to preserve the 
image of the type, the ectypal must be equal in extent 
and form to the archetypal. And yet this further expla- 
nation has not made the matter itself more clear, but more 
confusing, — both mechanically and intellectually. In the 
self-knowledge of God there are not ten parts, six of which 
he has decided to reveal unto us ; but, though only " as in a 
glass darkly," the whole image has been reflected to us in 
Revelation. Neither will it do to interpret the revelation 
of God's self-knowledge as a merely intellectual communica- 
tion, independent of Creation and the Incarnation ; for this 
would cut in Revelation itself the main artery of religion. 

Rather, therefore, than lose ourselves in this intellectual- 
istic abstraction, we adopt the names of Archetypal and 
Ectypal Theology in the originally fuller sense, i.e. as 
standing in immediate relation to the creation of man after 
the image of God. As man stands as ectype over against 
God, the archetype, man's knowledge of God can therefore 
be only ectypal. This is what we meant when we called 
Theology a dependent knowledge — a knowledge which is 
not the result of an activity on our part, but the result of 
an action which goes out from God to us ; and in its wider 
sense this action is God's self-revelation to His creature. 



CiiAP. I] § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY 257 

§ 60. Ectypal Theology the Fruit of Revelation 

The ectype does not arise unless there is a material that 
can receive the impression of the archetype, and the act of 
impressing it on this material has taken place. And though 
in the preceding section it was maintained that the ectypal 
knowledge of God did not arise from our observation of 
God but from self-communication on the part of God, and 
consequently bears a dependent character, we do not assert, 
that for the acquisition of this knowledge of God the nature 
and disposition of the subject are indifferent. On the con- 
trary, all revelation assumes (1) one who reveals Himself; 
(2) one to whom he reveals Himself; and (3) the possibility 
of the required relation between these two. In revelation, 
therefore, man (and more especially sinful man)^ who is to 
receive it, must be taken into account. If, as was done 
formerly, we exclusively consider Him who reveals Him- 
self and that which He reveals, this revelation lies outside 
of man ; the actual perception and assimilation are wanting ; 
and the Avhole end of revelation is lost. In the second 
place, it will not do to interpret revelation as an announce- 
ment or communication of the one subject to the other sub- 
ject, without taking due account of the fact that the subject 
Crod created the subject man^ and that God wholly maintains 
and governs man from moment to moment ; the result of 
which is, that He does not follow a way of communication 
that happens accidentally to be present, but that He Himself 
lays out the way of communication in keeping with His pur- 
pose. In the third place, it must be kept in view that the 
revelation of God is not an act of a single moment, but a 
contimwus process^ which extends itself across the ages, and 
in this extension does not purposelessly swing back and 
forth, but propels itself according to the motive contained 
in its idea, according to the nature of its successive content, 
and according to the nature of the bed which its stream 
must form for itself. In the fourth place, this revelation 
may not be interpreted as an atomistical self-communication 
of God to the several individuals^ but must be taken as a reve- 



258 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

lation to man in liis generations, i.e. to the organic unity 
of humanity, and only in this organic unity to the single 
man. And finally, in the fifth place, account must be kept 
of the special character which this revelation had to assume, 
both with regard to the act of revelation and its content, 
and the forming of its channel in the human spirit, in 
order, in spite of the obstruction of sin, to accomplish 
its original plan and to realize the purpose implied in its 
tendency. Though it is thus unquestionably true that in 
our sinful state we could never attain to a true Theology, 
i.e. a true knowledge of God, unless the form of revelation 
were soteriological, it is nevertheless necessary that in our 
representation of revelation also the fact be emphasized that 
the soteriological element is ever accidental, bears merely 
an intervenient character, and remains dependent upon the 
fundamental conception of revelation which is given in 
creation itself, and which teleologically looks forward to 
a state of things in which there shall be no more sin, so 
that every soteriological act shall belong to a never-return- 
inof Dast. 



o r 



The first proposition therefore reads : Grod reveals Him- 
self for His own sake, and not in behalf of man. 

This only true starting-point for the real study of Revela- 
tion has been too much lost from view, not only in recent 
times, but even in the more prosperous periods of sound 
Theology. Even in the treatment of the dogma of "the 
necessity of sacred Scripture," the fact of sin was always 
taken as the point of departure, and thus the starting-point 
for Revelation was found in the soteriological necessity of 
causing light to arise in our darkness. A revelation before 
sin was, to be sure, recognized, but it was never success- 
fully placed in relation to revelation in the theological 
sense ; and this was especially noticeable in the mechanical 
placing side by side of natural and revealed Theology. 
To repair this omission is therefore a necessity. Every 
interpretation of Revelation as given for man's sake, de- 
forms it. You either reduce Revelation to the Creation, or 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 259 

cause it to occur only after the Creation. If you accept the 
latter view, you make it intellectualistic, and it can only 
consist, as the Socinian conceived, of an outward mechanical 
communication of certain data, commandments, and statutes. 
Thus, however, true revelation, which is rooted in religion 
itself, is destroyed. If for this reason you favor the other 
horn of the dilemma, viz. that Revelation goes back to Crea- 
tion itself, then the motive for this Revelation cannot be found 
in man; simply because man was not yet in existence, and 
therefore could be no motive. For though it be asserted 
that, as the apostle Peter says, man was foreknown in the 
Divine decree before the creation, and that therefore Revela- 
tion could well point to this foreknown man, the argument 
is not valid. For in the decree a motive must have ex- 
isted for the foreknowledge of man himself; and if it be 
allowed that this motive at least could lie only in God, it 
follows that Revelation also, even if it found its motive in 
man, merely tended to make man what he should be for the 
sake of God, so that in this way also Revelation finds its 
final end in God^ and not in man. 

But even this might grant too much. With a little 
thought one readily sees that Revelation is not merely 
founded in Creation, but that all creation itself is revela- 
tion. If we avoid the Origenistic and pantheistic error that 
the cosmos is coexistent with God; the pagan representa- 
tion that God Himself labors under some higher necessity; 
and the Schleiermachian construction that God and the 
world were correlate, at least in the idea; and if, conse- 
quently, we stand firm in the sublime confession: ^^ I believe 
in Grod the Father Almighty^ Creator' of heaven and earthy'"' the 
motive for Creation cannot be looked for in anything outside 
of God, but only and alone in God Simself. Not in an eter- 
nal law (lex aeterna), a fate (^fiolpa^ or necessity (ava^icT])^ 
nor in some need of God nature, nor in the creature that 
was not yet created. He who does not worship God as self- 
sufficient and sovereign, misconceives and profanes His 
Being. Creation neither can nor may be conceived as 
anj^thing but a sovereign act of God, for His own glori- 



260 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

fication. God cannot be glorified by anything that comes 
to Him from without. By His own perfections alone can 
He be glorified. Hence creation itself is primarily nothing 
else than a revelation of the power of God; of the God 
Almighty^ who as such is the Creator of heaven and earth. 
If this is true of creation, and of the self-revelation of 
God which was effected in the creation, this must be true 
of all revelation, simply because the cosmos, and every 
creature in the cosmos, and all that is creaturely, are given 
in the creation. If you deny this, you make an essential 
distinction between all further revelation and the revelation 
in creation ; you place it as a second revelation mechanically 
alongside of the first; and lapse again into the irreligious, 
intellectualistic interpretation of revelation. If, on the 
other hand, further revelation is not taken except in organic 
relation to the revelation given in creation, and thus is post- 
ulated by it, the motive of creation becomes of itself the 
motive of its manifestation; and all later revelation must 
likewise be granted to have been given us, not for our sake, 
but in the last instance for God's own sake. For though it 
is self-evident that the manner of operation of this revela- 
tion in every concrete case adapts itself to the disposition of 
the creature, and in this creature reaches its temporal end, 
yet in the last instance it only completes its course when 
in this operation upon or enriching of this creature it glori- 
fies its Creator. When this revelation, therefore, leads to 
the creaturely knowledge of God, i.e. ectypal Theology, this 
knowledge of God is not given primarily for our benefit, but 
because God in His sovereignty takes pleasure in being Jcnoivn 
of His creature ; which truth is thus formulated in Holy 
Scripture, — that God doeth all things /or His Name's sake ; 
sometimes with the additional words: not for your saJces, 
Israel, 

From this the second proposition follows of itself, that 
Divine Revelation assumes a creature capable of transposing 
this Revelation into subjective knowledge of Grod. 

Revelation by itself would not be able to realize its aim. 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 261 

Imagine that there were no reasonable creatures, and that 
the creation consisted of nothing but entirely unconscious 
creatures, incapable of consciousness, the perfections of God 
revealed in His creation could not be evident to any one but 
God Himself. This, however, would be a contradiction in 
terms. He who is Himself the Author of revelation, knows 
the entire content of His revelation before He reveals it. 
Hence nothing can become known to Him by His revelation, 
which at first He did not know. This is possible in part 
with us. When by the grace of God a poet first carries a 
poetical creation in his mind, and afterwards reveals it in 
his poem, many things become known to him in this poem 
which at first were hid from him. This is accounted for by 
the fact that this poet was inspired in his poetic creation by 
a higher power, so that he himself did not know all the 
obscure contents of his imagination. With God, on the 
other hand, such cannot be the case, simply because God 
cannot be inspired by one higher than Himself, and because 
there is nothing in His Being which He does not see 
with fullest clearness of vision. This implies that there 
can be no mystery for God, either in His Essence, coun- 
sel, or plan of creation; and hence nothing can become 
revealed or known to God by creation. By creation the 
contents of His virtues are in nothing enriched ; in no 
particular do they become more glorious to Himself; hence 
there would be no revelation in creation or in any later 
activity of God, if there were no creature to whom all this 
could become the revelation of a mystery. For though we 
grant that God Himself sees and hears the beautiful in His 
creation ; we deny that this display in creation is a greater 
joy to God than the view of His perfections in Himself. 
Every effort to seek a necessary ground in this sense for 
the creation of the cosmos results in cancelling the self- 
sufficiency of the Eternal Being, and in making God, by 
His creation, come to the knowledge and possession of His 
own divine riches; and by a little deeper thought this of 
itself leads back again to the theory of the world's co- 
existence with God. 



262 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Dir. Ill 

The proposition of an unintentional revelation is equally 
untenable. This often happens with us, because the reve- 
lation of our person or of our disposition is not always 
under our control. Not only unintentionally, but some- 
times against our intention and in spite of our purpose 
to the contrary, all sorts of things are constantly heard and 
seen of us, which it was by no means our desire to reveal. 
But this again you cannot apply to the Eternal Being, with- 
out lapsing into the anthropopathic representation of His 
existence. Such unintentional discovery of self to others 
results from a lack of power or insight, and from a con- 
sequent dependence upon many human data. Thus the 
omnipotence and absolute independence of God would be 
impaired, if in Him you assumed this unconscious, uninten- 
tional, and in so far accidental, revelation. His revelation 
postulates both the will and the purpose to reveal Himself, 
and this is inconceivable, unless there is at the same time a 
conscious being outside of God, which is able to appropriate 
what is revealed, and for which this revelation is intended. 
Though a star is praised for sparkling, which it does with- 
out knowing it, and a flower for the aroma that flows from 
its cup without this cup perceiving it, and though, in a 
similar strain, we praise the native simplicity of a beautiful 
character that radiates without effort and conscious aim, 
yet with no such conception can we approach the Lord 
our God, for He has nothing that He does not owe to 
Himself, and in no single particular is He a mystery to 
Himself. In Him whose is the highest and the most com- 
plete consciousness, there is no room for the conditions of 
semi- or total-unconsciousness. What the Confessio Bel- 
giea states in Art. 12, that all created things are "for 
the service of man, to the end that man may serve his 
God," applies also to the realm of revelation, since man is 
the creature, by whom whatever is creaturely on earth be- 
comes the instrument of revelation of the attributes of God. 

Our second proposition, however, implies more than this. 
The conscious creature is not only indispensable in order that 
revelation can be revelation^ but that which is revealed must 



Chap. IJ THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 263 

also be transposed by man into subjective knowledge of God 
and of His perfections. That which God reveals is conscious 
knowledge of Himself, before He reveals it. He is not a 
Light from which effulgence radiates, while He Himself 
does not know that light. His self-knowledge is absolute, 
and the impulse to reveal His perfections arises from His 
knowledge of them. And therefore this revelation of His 
perfections does not reach its aim nor point of rest until God 
is known. Hence, without ever giving themselves to intel- 
lectualism, the Holy Scriptures always put this knowledge 
of God in the foreground, and stand in prospect a "know- 
ing of God as we are known." If Mozart had been a 
completely self-conscious musician, he would not have been 
able to develop his compositions otherwise than with the 
will and aim of finding performers and hearers who would 
not only hear his compositions and perform them, hut would 
also understand them. And in like manner revelation flows 
from the archetypal knowledge of God and strives to become 
ectypal knowledge of God in man. Thus revelation itself 
is properly no Theology, but flows from the auto-Theology 
in God Himself and has Theology, i.e. knowledge of God 
in man, for its result. 



This leads to our third proposition, viz. that man, in order 
to do this, must he adapted hy nature, relation and process to 
interpret what has been revealed as a revelation of Grod and to 
reduce it to subjective knowledge of Grod. 

It was the aim of propositions one and two to show that 
man did not come into being indifferent as to the manner 
how, and only afterwards revelation was added to him as 
an auxiliary, and was therefore adapted to his need; but 
that, on the contrary, revelation finds its end in God, and 
our human race was in its creation entirely adapted to this 
revelation. In this third proposition examine this original 
and necessary relation between revelation on the one side 
and the nature, relation and development process of our race 
on the other. And we point at once to the twofold office 



264 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Dir. Ill 

of man in revelation. He is not only to appropriate that 
which has been revealed, but he is himself a link in that reve- 
lation. This is exhibited most strongly in his logos, since 
by his logos he appropriates revelation to himself, and in his 
logos reflectively (abbildlich) reveals something of the eter- 
nal logos. If the cosmos is the theatre of revelation, in this 
theatre man is both actor and spectator. This should not be 
taken in the sense that, in what is revealed in him, he adds 
one single drop to the ocean of cosmical revelation, but 
rather, that man himself is the richest instrument in which 
and by which God reveals Himself. And he is this not so 
much on account of his body and his general psychical 
organization, but chiefly on account of that deepest and 
most hidden part of his being, in which the creaturely 
reaches its finest and noblest formation. And if, without 
lapsing into trichotomy, we may call this finest element in 
our human being the pneumatical^ we define it as being both 
the choicest jewel in the diadem of revelation and the instru- 
ment by which man transmutes all revelation into knowledge 
of Crod. Both are expressed in the creation of man after the 
image of God. On one hand, one's image is his completest 
revelation, and on the other hand, from just that creation 
after God's image originates that higher consciousness of 
man, by which in him also the logos operates. This is 
what the older Theology called innate or concreate Theology 
(theologia innata or concreata), and to which the doctrine 
of faith must be immediately related. 

To make this clear we must go back a moment to the first 
man, who, in so far as he represented our entire race, was 
no individual, and in whose case we do not yet need to 
reckon with the relation in which we stand to other men. 
It is evident that, when thus taken, Adam possessed in him- 
self, apart from the cosmos, everything that was necessary 
to have Jcnoivledge of Crod. 

Undoubtedly many things concerning God were manifest to 
him in the cosmos also ; without sin a great deal of God would 
have become manifest to him from his fellow-men ; and through 
the process of his development, in connection with the cosmos. 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 265 

he would have obtained an ever richer revelation of God. 
But apart from all this acquired knowledge of God, he had 
in himself the capacity to draw knowledge of God from what 
had been revealed, as well as a rich revelation from which to 
draw that knowledge. Our older theologians called these 
two together the "concreate knowledge of God"; and cor- 
rectly so, because here there was no logical activity which 
led to this knowledge of God, but this knowledge of God 
coincided with man's own self-knowledge. This knowl- 
edge of God was given eo ipso in his own self-conscious- 
ness; it was not given as discursive knowledge, but as 
the immediate content of self-consciousness. Even in our 
present degenerate condition, when much of ourselves can 
only be learned by observation, there is always a back- 
ground of self-knowledge and of knowledge of our own 
existence, which is given immediately with our self-con- 
sciousness. Before the fall, when no darkening had yet 
taken place, this immediate self-knowledge must have been 
much more potent and clear. And thus it could not be 
otherwise but that in this clear and immediate self-knowl- 
edge there was, without any further action of the logos in 
us, an equally immediate knowledge of God, the conscious- 
ness of which, from that very image itself, accompanied him 
who had been created in the image of God. Thus the first 
man lived in an innate knowledge of God, which was not 
yet understood, and much less expressed in words, just as 
our human heart in its first unfoldings has a knowledge of 
ideals, which, however, we are unable to explain or give a 
form to. Calvin called this the seed of religion (semen reli- 
gionis), by which he indicated that this innate knowledge of 
God is an ineradicable property of human nature, a spiritual 
eye in us, the lens of which may be dimmed, but always so 
that the lens, and consequently the eye, remains. 

In connection with this, now, stands faith, that wonderful 
TTLo-TL^, the right understanding of which has been more and 
more lost by the exclusively soteriological conception of our 
times. Of course as a consequence of the fall faith also 
was modified, and became faith in the Saviour of the world. 



266 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

But the form which anything has received as a consequence 
of sin can never be its proper or original form ; and it is 
equally absurd to look upon saving faith as a new spiritual 
sense implanted for the first time by regeneration. Nothing 
can ever be added to man by regeneration which does not es- 
sentially belong to human nature. Hence regeneration cannot 
put anything around us as a cloak, or place anything on our 
head as a crown. If faith is to be a human reality in the regen- 
erate, it must be an attitude .^(habitus) of our human nature 
as such ; consequently it must have been present in the first 
man ; and it must still be discernible in the sinner. To prove 
the latter is not difficult, provided it is acknowledged that 
ethical powers (sensu neutro) operate in the sinner also, even 
though in him they appear exclusively in the privative, i.e. sin- 
ful form. Taken this way, the pistic element is present in all 
that is called man ; only in the sinner this pistic element as- 
sumes the privative form, and becomes unfaith (ainaTia), If 
sin is not merely the absence of good (carentia boni), but posi- 
tive privation (actuosa privatio), airLarCa also is not only the 
absence of faith (absentia fidei), but the positive privation of 
faith (actuosa fidei privatio), and as such sin. By overlook- 
ing this distinction our earlier theologians came to speak 
of the innate knowledge of God (cognitio Dei innata) 
as an attitude (habitus), which properly invited criticism. 
Cognitio can be no habitus. But while they expressed 
themselves incorrectly, they were not mistaken in the mat- 
ter itself; they simply failed to distinguish between concreate 
theology (concreata), and faith which is inseparable from 
human nature. Faith indeed is in our human consciousness 
the deepest fundamental law that governs every form of dis- 
tinction, by which alone all higher "Differentiation" becomes 
established in our consciousness. It is the daring break- 
ing of our unity into a duality; placing of another ego 
over against our own ego; and the courage to face that 
distinction because our own ego finds its point of support 
and of rest only in that other ego. This general better 
knowledge of faith renders it possible to speak of faith in 
every domain; and also shows that faith originates primor- 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 267 

diall}^ from the fact that our ego places God over against 
itself as the eternal and infinite Being, and that it dares to 
do this, because in this only it finds its eternal point of 
support. Since we did not manufacture this faith our- 
selves, but God created it in our human nature, this faith 
is but the opening of our spiritual eye and the consequent 
perception of another Being, excelling us in everything, 
that manifests itself in our oivn being. Thus it does not orig- 
inate after the Cartesian style from an imprinted idea of 
God, but from the manifestation of God in our own being to 
that spiritual eye which has been formed in order, as soon as 
it opens, to perceive Him and in ecstasy of admiration to be 
bound to Him. By faith we perceive that an eternal Being 
manifests Himself in us, in order to place Himself over against 
our ego, in the same way in which we discover the presence 
of light by our eye ; but what this eternal Being is and what 
it demands of us, is not told us by faith, but by the innate 
knowledge of God, presently enriched by the acquired. 

The discovery, the perception of a mightier Ego, which is 
above and distinct from our own ego, is therefore the start- 
ing-point of all religion and of all knowledge of God. If 
we were not created after God's image, this manifestation 
would affect us strangely and cause us fear; but since in 
virtue of our creation there is an affinity between our own 
ego and that other Ego revealing itself to us, the manifesta- 
tion of that mighty Ego affects us pleasantly, it fascinates 
and satisfies us with a feeling of infinite rest. It appeals to 
us. And as all revelation finds its completion only in this, 
this appeal becomes at length a speaking to us. There is 
fellowship between that peace-bringing Being, that reveals 
itself to us, and our own ego. He is the heavenly Friend, 
who does not merely reveal himself as a silent presence, but 
who, asking for our word in prayer, addresses us in the high- 
est utterances of spirit, i.e. in the transparent word, and 
only in thus speaking to us becomes our God, unto whom 
goes out the worship of our hearts. In this way only does 
man know his God; not with a knowledge of Him or con- 
cerning Him, but in such a way that with the deepest utter- 



268 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [D it. Ill 

ance of the soul he knows his God personally ; not yet with 
the full vision, but with something already of the seeing 
of face to face lost by sin, and only to be perfected in the 
full unfolding of our nature. Thus there is a revelation 
of God about us and within us, and the latter culminates in 
the personal knowledge of the living God, as a God who 
dwells among and associates with us, and allows us to asso- 
ciate with Him. He who understands it differently from 
this separates Revelation from religion^ and degrades it to an 
intellectualistic communication of certain facts or statutes. 
For the fact must not be abandoned that religion germinates 
only when it attains unto that which is written of Enoch, 
viz. that he walked with G-od. Neither knowledge nor pious 
feeling by themselves can ever be called religion. Only 
when your God and you have met each other and associate 
and walk together, does religion live in your heart. 

But even this does not fully construe the conception of 
innate theology. The distinction between the seed of re- 
ligion and faith, both of which are increated in our human 
nature, explains how from the side of God a revelation takes 
place in us, and how our ego is disposed to observe this 
revelation in us, but this by itself does not give us any 
theology yet, i.e. knowledge of God. Even though revela- 
tion in us on the one hand, and the working of our faith on 
the other hand, have so far advanced that at length we have 
perceived God in us and consequently know God, we have 
as yet no knowledge of God, and hence no theology. I 
may know a number of persons in the world whom I have 
met, whose existence has been discovered to me, and of 
whom I have received general impressions, while yet I 
have no knowledge of them. That I may have knowledge 
of him whom I have met, the logical action must first take 
place. When I have met some one and thus know him, I 
inquire about him, or seek an interview with him, that 
I may obtain knowledge of his person. And such is the 
case here. Though God works and manifests Himself in 
our being, and though I have the power of faith to per- 
ceive this inworking and this manifestation, this produces 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 269 

nothing in me beyond perceptions, impressions and feelings ; 
while I am left to the mysticism of my emotions. If from 
this mysticism I want to advance to knowledge^ and transform 
revelation into theology, the logical action must enter in 
between ; perception must pass over into thought ; impression 
must sublimate itself into a conception; and thus the seed 
of religion must unfold the flower-bud in the word; viz. the 
word of adoration. Hence this logical action also was in- 
cluded in innate theology ; simply because otherwise it could 
have been no t\\Qology. This, however, should not be taken in 
the sense that Adam was created with some sort of a cate- 
chism in his head ; for logical action presumes subjective 
action of the human mind. If, therefore, we should speak 
Avith entire accuracy, we should say that there was no incre- 
ated theology in Adam, but that he was so created, that, in 
his aAvakening to self-consciousness, he arrived of necessity 
at this original theology from the data that were present in 
him. In a literal sense respiration was not increated in 
Adam, for the first inhalation only came when the creation 
was completed, while before the creation was ended he could 
not draw breath. Breathing is an action of the person 
which comes only when the person exists. Since all the 
conditions for breathing are given in our nature, and every 
person born in this nature breathes of himself and from 
necessity, no one hesitates to acknowledge that respiration 
is inborn with us all. It were mere prudery, therefore, to 
object to the expression of innate or concreate theology ; for 
though theologg is the result of a logical action in the sub- 
ject, with Adam this logical action took place immediately 
and from necessity ; and it was by this alone that the 
receiving of an oral revelation was already possible in para- 
dise. For it is plain that the entire representation which 
the Scripture gives us of the intercourse with God in 
paradise, of the fall and subsequent promise, becomes un- 
intelligible and falls away, if we assume in Adam exclu- 
sively the sense of the eternal, and deny him all conscious 
knowledge of God. 

Language itself decides the case. Speech without Ian- 



270 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

guage is inconceivable, and he who in contradiction to the 
Scriptures declares that the first man could utter at most a 
few vague sounds, but was not in possession of language, 
wholly denies thereby the Christian doctrine of creation and 
the fall, and consequently of the Salvation in Christ. If, on 
the other hand the original man, to speak with Heraclitus, 
possessed a language by ^vcn^} the very possession of that 
language assumes a logical action which is immediate, regu- 
lar and pure equally with our respiration. And if from 
the nature of the case this logical action was originally 
limited with reference to its content to what man perceived 
in himself, and, in his inner perceptions, the perception of 
God stood majestically in the foreground, it is evident that 
the first natural action of the human consciousness could 
have been no other than the necessary translating into 
knowledge of God of the inner sensibilities and perception 
effected in him by God Himself. And on this ground we 
hold that innate or concreate theology presumes three fac- 
tors : (1) the inworking and manifestation of God Himself 
in Adam's inner being ; (2) faith, by which the subject 
perceives and grasps this inworking and manifestation ; and 
(3) the logical action, by which of himself and of necessity 
he reduces this content in his heart to knowledge of Grod, in 
the form of thought and word. 

From this it does not follow that one of these three fac- 
tors should fall outside of Revelation. With none of these 
three factors do we overstep the boundary of creation, 
and all creation as such belongs to the domain of revelation. 
This does not need to be shown of the first factor. The 
action of God in our being is of itself revelation. But this 
same thing is true also of the second factor : faith. For 
what is faith but the sympathetic drawing of the image 
(Abbild) to the original (Urbild) ; and what is there 
revealed in this faith but that God has created us after 

1 In opposition to the conventional theory of Democritus, Heraclitus 
taught that language was produced in us by the impressions received from 
the objects in or around us. So Democritus taught a language by dia-is, he 
by (pvffis. 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 271 

Himself, for Himself, and to Himself? And concerning 
the third factor, viz. the knowledge which is the result of the 
logical action, what expresses itself in this but the reflective 
(abbildliche) working in us of that Logos, which is in God 
and itself is God? The whole man, therefore, in his exist- 
ence, in his relation to God, in his communion with, and 
his knowledge of, God, is originally but one rich revelation 
of God to man. At a later period revelation may also come 
to him from without ; but it begins by being in him, as an 
immediate result of his creation. 

This innate or connate theology was destined to be en- 
riched by acquired (acquisita) theology. Not in the sense of 
addition, as though this increated knowledge would gradu- 
ally increase by such and such a per cent. Innate theology 
was rather a completed whole by itself. It constituted all 
that knowledge of God, which was to be obtained from the 
immediate communion of God with the individual soul. It 
completed that knowledge of God, whose principium lies in 
the mystery of the emotions. But since the creation did not 
consist of that single soul but of a human race, and of a 
cosmos as the basis of this entire human race, a revelation of 
God was also necessary in that cosmos and in that organic 
unit of humanity ; and since the individual soul stands in 
organic relation to humanity and to the cosmos, its knowl- 
edge of God had to include both these other spheres of 
revelation. Even though you conceive a development apart 
from sin, acquired theology would of itself have been 
joined to innate theology, as soon as man entered into con- 
scious relation to the cosmos and humanity as an organic 
unit. Not for the sake of filling out what was incomplete, 
but of enriching the knowledge complete in itself with the 
revelation in both these other spheres. Thus, for instance, 
to enlarge upon this with a single word, the idea of God's 
Omnipotence, Wisdom, etc., would never have entered into 
the consciousness of the soul from the cosmos nor from 
the universal human life. These ideas lie in innate the- 
ology, and are given in the idea of G-od as such. Neverthe- 
less the significance and tendency of these ideas are only 



272 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

clearly seen " since the creation of the world, being perceived 
through the things that are made." And as to the acquired 
theology which comes to the individual soul from its relation 
to the organic unity of humanity, it is evident at once that 
the Divine is too potent and overwhelming to reveal itself 
in one human soul. Only in the combination of the whole 
race of man does this revelation reach its creaturely com- 
pleteness. Which could not be so if one man were merely a 
repetition of another, but which leads to that completeness 
since every individual is a specific variation. Herein also 
lies the ground for the social character of all religion. The 
knowledge of God is a common possession, all the riches of 
which can only be enjoyed in the communion of our race. 
Not, indeed, as if even outside of religion man is a social 
being, so that of necessity his religion also is of a social char- 
acter, for this would reverse the case ; but because humanity 
is adapted to reveal God, and from that revelation to attain 
unto His knowledge, does one complement another, and only 
by the organic unity, and by the individual in communion 
with that unity, can the knowledge of God be obtained in a 
completer and clearer sense. 

For this reason reference was made not merely to our 
nature^ and to the relation we sustain to one another, but 
also to the process or course run of necessity by human devel- 
opment. Without sin Adam would not have remained what 
he was, but he and his race would have developed them- 
selves into a higher condition. The process as known in 
reality may be dominated by sin, but even with a sinless 
existence there would have been a process of develop- 
ment; and this element must be reckoned with in theologia 
acquisita. Of course we cannot enter into the particulars of 
a supposed possibility cut off by sin. This were to lose 
ourselves in fiction. But in general it may be affirmed, 
(1) that even without sin human existence would have been 
a successive existence in time, and consequently an exist- 
ence in the form of a process; (2) that the entire human 
race was not in existence at once, but could only come suc- 
cessively to life ; and (3), as is seen from the paradise narra- 



Chap. 1] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 273 

tive itself, the study of the cosmos would have borne a 
successive character. Hence in this process there would 
have been progress, and not simple repetition. Difference 
of relation to the Eternal Being would have resulted from 
difference of conditions. The relations among these sev- 
eral conditions would have been organic. Hence in this 
process of human development there would of itself have 
appeared a process of development of the knowledge of God. 
Yea, this process itself, as history foreordained and ruled by 
God from step to step, would in turn have become a revela- 
tion sui generis. In this development of the human race 
the logical consciousness in man would likewise have ob- 
tained a development of its own. Thus parallel to the 
process of history there would have run a history of man 
as a logical being. In proportion as revelation enriched 
itself, the instrument would thus have become more potent by 
which man transmuted the treasures of this revelation into 
Theology. We do not say that this would have taken place 
in the form of our present science. In our human existence 
everything is so intimately connected, that the modification 
which our entire existence experienced by sin and by sin- 
restraining grace, both "common" and "particular," im- 
presses its stamp upon our science also. Abstraction, which 
at present is absolutely indispensable to our science, would 
certainly not have exercised so strong an influence without 
sin as it does now. But in whatever form common human 
consciousness might have developed itself without sin. 
Theology, i.e. the knowledge of God, would have occupied 
a sphere of its own in the world of thought, and would by no 
means have been restricted to the secret reverie of individuals 
upon the sensations of their inmost soul. All revelation 
proceeds from the Logos (John i. 1-8), and therefore cannot 
rest content as long as it is not grasped and reflected back 
by the logical consciousness of individuals and of the Avhole 
of humanity, i.e. by the "logos in humanity." In this way 
knowledge of God would have proceeded immediately from 
revelation, and in Virtue of the organic relation and develop- 
ment of our race this knowledge of God eo ipso would have 



274 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

assumed a scientific form, even if by another effort of the mind 
than that from which at present the science of Theology is 
born. Theology as a science would then have proceeded 
immediately and of necessity from Theology as the personal 
and universal knowledge of God, and it would never have 
entered the mind of any one to understand by the name of 
Theology anything but that God-knowledge itself. Scien- 
tific Theology also would rigorously have maintained its 
character as knowledge of God. The three above-mentioned 
factors — revelation, faith and the logical action — are and 
ever will be with acquired Theology also, which develops 
of itself into scientific Theology, the three constituent ele- 
ments of ectypal Theology. Without revelation nothing is 
known; without /azY/i there is no apprehension nor appropria- 
tion of that revelation ; and without the logical action, that 
which has been perceived cannot be transmuted into subjec- 
tive knowledge of God. 

We, however, may not rest content with this supposition 
of a sinless development. The development is a sinful one, 
and all closer insight into the nature of Theology must 
therefore deal with this fact. And yet we do not deem the 
exposition superfluous of the relation which would have 
arisen in the case of a sinless development. It is rather a 
significant fault that in later theological studies this has 
been too much neglected. We understand what darkness is 
only from the antithesis of light. Pathology assumes the 
knowledge of the normal body. And so too the sinful de- 
velopment of our race and of its world of thought, in relation 
to intervenient grace, can never be understood except we first 
leave sin out of account. He only who has before his eyes 
the straight line understands the crooked line. To note a 
deviation, I must know where the right path runs. And the 
negative or privative character of sin makes this also neces- 
sary with the study of Theology. By the too exclusively 
soteriological interpretation of Theology we have become 
unaccustomed to this ; while the theologians, who avoided 
this danger, weakened the fact of sin, and so lost more or 
less the whole antithesis. Formerly, however, in the days 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 275 

when Theology was still taken theologically^ this distinction 
was rigorously maintained; and every one who, as theolo- 
gian, aims again at Theology in its real sense, must return 
with us to this distinction. 

But neither in this discussion of the Revelation of God to 
the sinner^ any more than in the first part of this section in 
our explanation of the Revelation of God to man, will we 
describe the content and form of that Revelation itself. For 
so far as the form of this revelation is in order in Encyclo- 
pedia, it falls to be treated in the chapter on the Principium 
of Theology. Since now, however, we have only just begun 
to develop the conception of Theology from its idea and 
history, we cannot concern ourselves with that content and 
form, but must confine ourselves here to its general character. 



In view of this our fourth proposition reads, that the revela- 
tion of Grod to the sinner remains the same as the revelation of 
God to man without sin, only ivith this twofold 7iecessary differ- 
ence, that formally the disorder in the sinner must he neutral- 
ized, and materially the knowledge of God must he extended so 
as to include the knowledge of God^s relation to the sinner. 

In this connection we need not concern ourselves with the 
fact that it is grace that speaks in the so-called soteriological 
Revelation. This belongs properly to Dogmatics and not 
to Encyclopedia. In passing, however, we suggest that 
the possibility is conceivable, that after man had become a 
sinner, God might have continued to reveal Himself as before. 
The result of this would not have been, as is commonly 
asserted, that the natural knowledge of God alone would 
have survived; for, as will be shown later on, this natural 
knowledge of God also is a fruit of grace, and more particu- 
larly of ''^ common grace.'''' Imagine that all grace had been 
withdrawn, so that sin would have been able to develop its 
deepest energies in the sinner all at once, without any check 
or opposition, nothing would have remained but spiritual 
darkness, and all "knowledge of God" would have turned 
into its opposite. Hence to obtain a clear insight into the 



276 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Dir. Ill 

modification suffered by the original revelation on account of 
sin, we must go back to this hypothesis and put the ques- 
tion, in what condition the three factors of the knowledge 
of God — revelation, faith and the logical action of the 
human mind — would exhibit themselves under this con- 
stellation. 

Revelation, taken as limited to man and interpreted as the 
inworking and manifestation of God in man's hidden being, 
does not cease with sin ; nothing can annihilate the omni- 
presence of God, not even sin; nor can man's dependence as 
image upon the archetype be destroyed, neither can the mys- 
tical contact of the infinite and the finite in the human soul be 
abolished. Thus revelation is continued in the heart of man. 
That which in his hellish terror drove Judas to despair and 
suicide, was but the perception of this fearful manifestation 
of God in the deepest centre of his person. Only this reve- 
lation, which was originally sympathetic, turns into its 
opposite and becomes antipathetic. It becomes the revela- 
tion of a God who sends out His wrath and punishes the 
sinner. Even in hell the sinner continues to carry in him- 
self this inworking of God's omnipresence. Because as 
sinner also he remains forever man and must remain such, 
he can never escape from that revelation. "If I make my 
bed in hell, behold. Thou art there." 

The same is true of the second factor, Tr/b-Tt?. Faith also 
belongs to human nature, consequently the sinner can never 
rid himself of it; it also turns into its opposite and becomes 
unfaith (h'jnaTia); which must not be understood as a mere 
want or defect of faith, but always as an active deprivation 
(actuosa privatio). The energy which by nature operates 
in faith remains the same, but turns itself away from God 
and with all the passion at its command attaches itself to 
something else. This is accounted for by the fact that reve- 
lation can no longer reach its highest point in the sinner, 
viz. the personal manifestation of God to the sinner. So 
that it is limited to the internal operations of God in His 
anger, and thus to perceptions in the subject of an awful 
power that terrifies him. This perception can affect faith in 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 277 

two ways: the sinner to whom God can no longer appear 
personally can either attribute this inworking to some power- 
ful, terrible creature, and for that reason direct his faith to 
this monstrous creature itself; or, against this terrifying 
power in his inmost soul he can seek protection elsewhere, 
and thus centre his faith upon a creature that is sympathetic 
to him. After he has become a sinner, man still continues 
to seek after a something to which to cleave with his faith ; 
even though, in Diabolism, Satan himself became this to him. 

And finally the third factor, the logical action by which 
that which faith receives by revelation is raised to subjec- 
tive knowledge, remains also operative in the sinner, and, 
cases of idiocy and lunacy excepted, maintains itself in him. 
The sinner also is impelled to reflect in his consciousness 
the perceptions which by means of faith he has grasped 
as real, and placed in relation to an author. Though the 
stimulus of the logical activity generally operates less 
strongly in the sinner, since it is the tendency of sin to 
slacken all activity, yet this is by no means the case with 
all individuals, and so far as faith has turned into unfaith 
it can strongly stimulate this activity from sheer enmity 
against God. Even then, this logical activity does not lead 
to the knowledge of God, but simply to the erroneous effort 
to explain the potent and terrible perceptions, actually re- 
ceived in one's being by the inworking of God, in such a way 
that God is denied by the intellect, and all such inworking is 
either explained away or explained from the creature. That 
which is written of Satan: "The devils also believe and 
tremble," expresses the condition of the sinner under the per- 
ception of the inworking of God in his soul ; only with this 
difference, that the demons^ as non-somatic, cannot deceive 
themselves with reference to the reality of the existence of 
God, and can work no eclipse of His existence by the sub- 
stitution of a creature, which is the very thing that man as 
sinner can do; at least so long as he is upon earth, and 
especially in connection with the restraint of sin by common 
grace. 

In case, therefore, that revelation had not been modified 



2T8 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

on tlie part of God, by way of accommodation to the sinner, 
revelation would have worked nothing in man beyond the 
sense of the presence of a terrible power that makes him 
tremble; faith would have turned into unfaith toward God, 
and would have attached itself to an antipathetic or sympa- 
thetic creature ; and the logical activity would have sought 
an explanation of that perception, but would never have 
achieved any knowledge of God. There would have been no 
Theology; and nothing could have been done on the part 
of the sinner to create light in this darkness. This light 
could only come from the side of God. 

This implies, as the facts of history show, that there was 
in fact a modification introduced in the original plan of reve- 
lation and of the construction from this revelation of a 
knowledge of God. It was changed, but not by the addition 
of something new and foreign. This would have worked 
magically; it would have stood mechanically by the side of 
man, and would have been incapable of assimilation. That 
which is to be knowable to man and is to be known by man 
must correspond to the disposition of human nature. That 
which does not approach us in a human perceptible form has 
no existence for us, and that which is not adjusted to our 
subjective logos can never become the content of our knowl- 
edge. Hence revelation to the sinner must continue to ex- 
hibit that same type to which man is adjusted in his creation. 
This first, and in the second place there must occur such a 
modification in revelation as will make it correspond to the 
modification which took place in man. The nature of the 
change worked in man by sin governs the change which must 
follow in revelation. This also affords no room for arbitra- 
riness or whim. The fundamental type remains what it is 
in original revelation, and modification in this type must 
entirely agree with the modification occasioned by sin. In the 
third place, it must not be lost from view that immediate re- 
straint of the deadly operation of sin was necessary, in order 
that such a modified revelation might still be of use. If sin 
had once worked its absolute effect, there could be no more 
help against it by revelation. All they who have once re- 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 279 

ceived the hellish character, lie in a darkness which no ray 
of light can penetrate. And in that case all contact with the 
light of revelation but leads to sin against the Holy Ghost. 
All "special " revelation, as it is commonly though not alto- 
gether correctly called, postulates common graee^ i.e. that act 
of God by which negatively He curbs the operations of Satan, 
death, and sin, and by which positively He creates an inter- 
mediate state for this cosmos, as well as for our human race, 
which is and continues to be deeply and radically sinful, but 
in which sin cannot work out its end (reXo?). In the cove- 
nant with ]^oah especially, which embraced the whole earth 
and all that has life upon it, this "common grace " assumed a 
more definite form; and human life, as we know it, is not life 
in paradise, nor life as it would be if sin had been allowed 
to work out its final effects, but life in which evil truly 
predominates and works its corruption, but always in such 
a way that what is human as such is not destroyed. The 
wheel of sin is certainly revolving, but the brakes are on. 
This is what our churches confessed when they spoke of 
sparks (scintillae) or remnants (rudera) which still re- 
mained of the image of God, which did not mean that they 
have remained of themselves, as though sin would not have 
extinguished those sparks or destroyed those remnants had 
it been able to do so; but that by "common grace " God has 
restrained and curbed for a time the destructive power of sin. 
In virtue of the Noachic covenant this restraint continues to 
be applied till the Parous ia. Then the brake is taken from 
the wheel and those sparks also go out into entire darkness. 
The so-called "special" revelation, therefore, does not 
adapt itself to the sinner, as he would have been, if sin had 
worked in him its destruction to the end. Such a sinner 
would have become satanic, and consequently have passed 
beyond all possibility of salvation. But special revelation 
is intended for the sinner who stands in common grace. 
This is not said in order to postulate in the sinner anything 
positive, that could ever produce regeneration. Even while 
standing in common grace the sinner is " dead in trespasses 
and sin," and in regeneration is absolutely passiA^e; only 



280 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

under common grace palingenesis is still possible^ while 
it has become an entire impossibility in the angel absolutely 
fallen and will be impossible in man when he shall have 
become absolutely satanic. This refutes the representation 
that the sinner is a "stock or block," and what we maintain 
is but the antithesis of the Reformed against the Lutheran 
representation, in which it was objected to on our part, that 
every point of connection for grace was wanting in the 
sinner. Re-creation may never be interpreted as an abso- 
lute creation. 

With reference now to the modifications which of neces- 
sity must occur in the fundamental type of revelation, it is 
evident that these must take place in each of the three 
factors which lead to the knowledge of God. 

Since God in revelation could no longer appear to the 
spiritual vision of man, after it had been darkened by 
sin, that self-manifestation had to be transferred from the 
mystery of soul-life to the outer world, with the incarnation 
as its central point, which is by no means the necessary 
complement of the normal human development, but was 
demanded only and alone by sin. From this it follows of 
itself that the method of revelation became inverted. If it 
began originally in the mystical nature of the individual, 
that so it might grow into a common revelation to our race, 
this was no longer possible after the fall. All knowledge, 
which as a connected whole directs itself from the external 
to the internal, is bound to the method of first establishing 
itself in the common consciousness, and from this only can 
it enter the consciousness of the individuals. Andi formally 
it is by these two data that special Revelation is entirely 
governed; while its material modification could consist in 
nothing else than that God should no longer reveal Himself 
to the sinner antipathetically in His anger, but sympatheti- 
cally, i.e. in His pitying grace. 

So much for revelation itself. On the other hand, the 
modification effected in the second factor — faith — bears an 
entirely different character. The faith life of the sinner is 



Chap. 1] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 281 

turned away from God in airio-Tia^ and attaches itself to some- 
thing creaturely, in which it seeks support against God. 
If, now, this turning of faith into its opposite stood as a 
psychical phenomenon by itself, this faith could only again 
be made right. But such is not the case. That faith turned 
into its opposite took place in connection with the entire 
change occasioned in the psychical existence of man, and 
extended not only to the outward act but even to the root. 
Recovery of the original working of faith is, therefore, only 
possible by palingenesis, i.e. by bending right again, from 
the root up, the direction of his psychical life. Potentially, 
in order from the potential to become actual. In the second 
place this faith, which was originally directed only to the 
manifestation of God in the soul, was now to be directed 
to the manifestation of God in the flesh, and thus become 
faith in Christ. And in the third place this faith, which 
originally could turn to unfaith, was now to obtain such a 
character, that, once grasping God in Christ, it should hold 
fast forever^ and so far as its fundamental tendency is con- 
cerned, would not again turn back. 

It is not so easy to lay hand on the change, necessitated by sin 
in the entire scheme of revelation, with reference to the third 
factor : the logical action. Here, confusion has sprung from the 
almost exclusively soteriological interpretation of the knowl- 
edge of God. It was thought that Revelation was exclusively 
intended to save the elect; consequently Revelation could not 
be understood except as directed to the individual person; 
and this has prevented every collective view of special Revela- 
tion as a whole. In this way one becomes at once involved 
in the insoluble antinomy, that in order to be saved the first 
fallen man in paradise must already have had this Revela- 
tion in a state of sufficient completeness., and that therefore 
all that came afterward was really superfluous, since that 
which was sufficient to save Adam ought also to suffice for 
Isaiah, Augustine and Luther. From this point of view an 
historical, progressive and an ever increasingly rich revela- 
tion is inconceivable. Already in its first form it must be 
complete ; and what is added at a later date is superfluous 



282 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Dir. Ill 

luxury. If meanwhile you face the fact, that this Revelation 
has a history^ and in part still progresses, and that from 
this long process a broadly ramified and organic whole is 
born, you incur the other danger, that in this Revela- 
tion the saving germ is distinguished from that which has 
grown around it; in which way a retreat is suggested from 
the clearly conscious to the less clearly conscious ; which 
opens the door to boundless arbitrariness; and ends in a 
return to mysticism, and in viewing all logical action as 
accidental. Which evil is still more aggravated by the 
consideration that the humblest-minded people should have 
the full offer of salvation, and that even children, who die 
before they have awakened to any consciousness, should not 
be excluded. And this obliges you to conceive the germ 
to be so small that even the simplest mind can grasp it, and 
to place the degree of consciousness so loiu^ yea, even below 
zero, as not to exclude the infant that dies at its very 
birth. Thus you see that this exclusively soteriological 
interpretation of special Revelation tends directly to its 
destruction; for from the nature of the case nothing what- 
ever remains of an external revelation as the means of sal- 
vation for the young dying child. Hence it is no help to 
you, that along with the logical action you point to divine 
illumination. This may be added to it, but soteriologically 
can never be the essential condition. And the fact is well 
known, that this soteriological interpretation of revelation 
as a revelation of salvation has of necessity led many minds 
to seek refuge again in the tents of mysticism; and to deem 
themselves accordingl}^ authorized to try to their heart's con- 
tent their anatomical skill upon the Holy Scriptures as upon 
a corpus vile. 

From this difficulty there is no escape, until special 
Revelation is no longer viewed as directed soteriologically to 
individual man. Revelation goes out to humanity taken as 
a whole. Since humanity unfolds itself historically^ this 
Revelation also bears an historic character. Since this 
humanity exists organically, having a centrum of action, 
this Revelation also had to be organic^ with a centrum of its 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 283 

own. And as individuals partake of this human life only in 
relation to humanity as a whole, so also in relation to this 
whole alone is Revelation of any significance to individual 
man. By this we do not deny the soteriological aim of 
special Revelation, but merely assert that salvation of the 
individual soul is not its rule. Its standard is and will be 
theological ; its first aim is theodicy. Surely whosoever be- 
lieves on Christ shall be saved ; this is possible first and only 
because God has sent His Son; but the aim, and therefore 
also end, of all this is, to make us see how God has loved 
His Avorld, and that therefore the creation of this cosmos, 
even in the face of sin, has been no failure. Hence Reve- 
lation taken as a whole aims at three things : (1) the actual 
triumph over sin, guilt and death, — a triumph which for 
the sake of Theology could not be limited to God's plan or 
counsel, but was bound to go out into the cosmical reality ; 
(2) the clear reflection of the manifold wisdom of God in 
the logical consciousness of man; and (3) such a dioramic 
procedure, that at every given moment of its career it offers 
all that is necessary for the salvation of the contempora- 
neous generation and of all persons in that generation. 
Passing by the first and the third for a moment, we con- 
sider the second alone as touching directly upon the logical 
action. The realization of the triumph over sin, guilt and 
death belongs in revelation to life itself ; the salvation of 
individuals does not depend in principle upon the logical 
action, but upon the rectification of faith; and with the 
logical action, which is the point in hand, the main 
point is what we called, in the second place, the reflection 
of the wisdom of God in the logical consciousness of 
humanity. The subject of this action is not the individual 
person, but the general Ego of believing humanity — a 
limitation in which the additional term of "believing" is 
no contradiction, if only it is understood how wrong it is to 
suppose that the real stem of humanity shall be lost, and 
that merely an aggregate of elect individuals shall be saved. 
On the contrary, it should be confessed that in hell there is, 
only an aggregate of lost individuals, who were cut off from: 



284 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

the stem of humanity, while humanity as an organic whole is 
saved, and as such forms the "body of Christ." By "believ- 
ing humanity," therefore, we understand the human race 
as an organic whole, so far as it lives^ i.e. so far as unbelief 
has turned again to faith or shall turn. 

In the general consciousness of humanity thus taken, 
the content, according to the original disposition of our cre- 
ation, should be formed by individual accretion. Bud by 
bud unfolds, and thus only is the foliage of the bush gradu- 
ally adorned with flowers. Without sin the logical action, 
which translates the content of faith into a clear concep- 
tion, and thus into knowledge of God, would have gone out 
from the individuals, and from these single rills the stream 
would have been formed. Here, also, the way would have led 
from within outward. This, however, was cut off by sin. 
As soon as sin had entered in, revelation had to work from 
without inward, since sin had fast bolted the door which 
gave access to the manifestation of God in the soul. No 
sooner had sin gained an entrance than Adam discerned and 
perceived the presence of the Lord approaching him from 
tvithout in the cool of the day. And thus the problem 
arises, in what way the logical action, which is to transmute 
the content of faith into knowledge of God, can come from 
without, in order now inversely, from the general conscious- 
ness, to reach the consciousness of the individual. And from 
the nature of the case there is no simple solution for this 
very complicated problem, but a very complex one, which 
can only be fully explained in the chapter on the principium 
of Theology. The lines alone can here be indicated, whose 
combination and crossing offer the figure for this solution. 

In the first place, then, let us observe that the general 
subject of the essential ego of restored humanity can be no 
abstraction, simply because an abstraction is incapable of 
any logical action. Agreeably to this the Scripture teaches 
that this general subject is the Christ. As we commonly 
say that there is a thinking head in an association, group, 
or party, or that he who forms a school is the essentially 
thinking head for all his school, so in a mucli more rigorous 



CHAr. 1] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 285 

sense is Christ the thinking subject of our restored human- 
ity, in whose common consciousness "the manifold wisdom 
of God " is to reflect itself. The Church confesses this by 
honoring him as prophet^ and Paul expresses it by saying 
that Christ is first given us as wisdom (1 Cor. i. 30). Even 
though it is the Holy Spirit who executes the logical action, 
it is Chi'ist himself who said: "He shall receive of mine, 
and shall show it unto you." He is not only the light and 
the life and the way, but He is also the truth. And Christ 
can be this, because he is himself the Logos, as the Evan- 
gelist emphasizes so strongly, and because the logos in man 
exhibits the image of this Logos of God. If now there were 
no causal relation between these two, Christ would be 
inconceivable as subject of the new humanity. Since, how- 
ever, our logos is reflectively (abbildlich) the counterpart of 
the divine Logos, and since this Logos is in consequence, 
also independently of sin, "the Light of the world," thus 
supporting and animating the logical existence of man, it is 
in every way conceivable that this Logos should approach 
individual man from without, for the sake of executing for 
him and in his stead the logical action, for which he him- 
self had become disabled, and thus by indoctrination in the 
literal sense to bring him back again to that logical action. 
This was implied in the saying of the older theologians, 
that the Logos had revealed himself to us in a twofold way, 
viz. in the reality of being by incarnation^ and in the world 
of our consciousness by what, for brevity's sake, we will call 
inscripturation^ without emphasizing for the present the 
scriptural part. There was a revelation of the Logos, thej- 
said, in thQ fleshy and a revelation of the Logos in the ivord^ 
or, if you please, in being and thought. And because both 
these revelations were revelations of the one Logos, they 
were organically united in him, and together formed one 
whole. If the incarnation were nothing but a physical 
fact, without a logical content, this fact could not be taken 
up into our consciousness as far as its content is con- 
cerned. And, on the other hand, if the revelation hy the 
word had no background in reality, and no central motive 



286 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

in the incarnation, it were nothing but an abstraction. 
Since, however, tlie subject of the incarnation is one with 
the subject of the revealed word, there is not merely har- 
mony between the two, but organic relation ; and this organic 
relation is most strongly evident when the incarnate Logos 
utters even as man the oracles of God. To be sure the Logos is 
not bound to the organ of his own human nature for revelation 
by the word ; as organic head of the new humanity he can also 
speak through the organ of other human persons ; so Peter 
aihrms of the prophets (1 Pet. i. 11, what the spirit of 
Christ which was in them did signify) and Jesus himself 
declares of the apostles ; yet the coincidence of the two lines, 
that of the incarnation (ivcrdpKcocris:^ and of the words (XaXta), 
in Christ's own manifestation, lends an entirely unique 
majesty to his word, which does not appear to this extent 
either before or after him. 

Thus, if it is true of sinless humanity that the " knowledge 
of God " could gradually ripen in individual persons and from 
the few enter into the general human consciousness, it is the 
opposite of this that takes place with sinful, and therefore to 
be restored, humanity. Christ, as the Head of the Body, is 
the general subject of restored humanity; and the knowledge 
of God is not only complete in him, but from him it descends 
to individual believers. It is the same difference that is 
found in the domain of ethics between the dispensations of 
paradise and Golgotha. In paradise ethical life is first 
personal, and then common, and is intended to progress 
toward perfection. In Christ, on the other hand, holiness 
is centrally given for his entire mystical body, from him 
to communicate itself to his members ; while in Christ also 
an ethical perfection is offered to us which is no more 
to be acquired, but is now finished. And the same is true 
of the knowledge of God. This also is first in Christ as 
our common head and centrum^ and descends from him to 
individual believers (" Neither knoweth any man the Father 
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal 
him." Matt. xi. 27); and again this knowledge of God 
in Christ is perfect ("As the Father knoweth me, even so 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 28T 

know I tlie Father." John x. 15). Our older theologians 
expressed this entirely exceptional position of Christ as our 
prophet by attributing to him the Theologia Unionis, i.e. that 
"knowledge of God" which resulted from what he him- 
self described by saying: I and the Father are one. The 
Christological explanation of this is not in order here, but 
in Dogmatics. But to show the significance of this fact 
to special revelation, we here indicate these three points: 
(1) that the theologia unionis is not taken as an adequate 
divine self-knowledge, but always as a human knowledge of 
Grod, i.e. a knowledge as complete as the measure of human 
capacity will allow, but nevertheless ever bound to this 
measure. Our eye can only take in light to a limited 
degree of intensity; stronger light does not lighten us, 
but blinds our eye, and that degree of light only which is 
adjusted to our eye gives us entire clearness. In the same 
way a knowledge of God which exceeds our human limita- 
tions would throw no light into our darkness, but cause us 
to see still less. (2) Let it be observed that this knowledge 
of God as the fruit of Christ's union with the Father was 
not the result of a dialectical analysis, but was intuitive, 
and therefore was not acceptable "to the wise and the 
learned," but intelligible to babes. It is not said, there- 
fore, that Christ is our knowledge Qyvwcn^')^ much less 
that he is our understanding (crweo-t?), but that he is our 
wisdom (ao(f)ia). Christ does not argue, he declares; 
he does not demonstrate, he shows and illustrates ; he does 
not analyze, but with enrapturing symbolism unveils the 
truth. The statement that Christ "increased in wisdom" 
cannot detain us here ; in this instance we merely deal with 
Christ after his baptism, when the "hear him" had been 
proclaimed of him. And the objection that Christ con- 
sulted the Holy Scriptures of Israel has no weight with 
those who confess, with the apostle Peter, that Christ is 
also the subject of prophecy. But in whatever way this 
may be taken, the result remains the same. The Son, who 
was in the bosom of the Father, has declared Him unto us, 
and this implies what we postulated: (1) that the knowl- 



288 § 60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

edge of God of restored humanity was first in its general 
subject, i.e. in Christ; and (2) that in this general subject 
it was perfect. 

If this is the beginning of the logical action by which 
regenerated humanity turns into knowledge the content of 
revelation received by faith, it is at once evident that this 
does not end the logical action. First, there is still want- 
ing the logical action of the individual, by which he 
comes to a personal knowledge of God; and, in the second 
place, the central and complete knowledge of God, which 
the w^hole body of Christ possesses in Him who has been 
given it of God for wisdom, must be radiated from all 
the combining articulations of regenerated humanity, and 
must become "understanding" in its dialectical conscious- 
ness. 

With reference to the first it is necessary that the organ 
or instrument for this logical action in the sinner shall 
regain the power which it has lost by sin. Although we 
are not deprived by sin of the power of thought, and though 
our law of thought is not broken, the pivot of our thought 
has become displaced, and thereby our activity of thought, 
applied to divine things, has a wrong effect. This is 
restored by divine illumination, which does not imply that 
he who has thus been enlightened is to think more 
acutely. Greater or lesser acuteness of thought depends 
upon personal conditions which are entirely different. Paul 
is a more acute thinker than James, and in acuteness of 
thought Aristotle and Kant excel by far the majority of 
Christians. If I put a sharp knife in a mowing-machine, 
but place it too high, so that it cannot touch the grass, all 
action of the machine is in vain ; and with a duller knife, 
which touches the grass, I will produce ten times as much 
effect. And such is the case here. As long as the divine 
illumination remains wanting, the logical instrument in the 
sinner is out of relation to divine things. It does not touch 
them, and therefore its action is in vain. The instrument 
of the logical action is not repaired mechanically; this 
postulates the palingenesis of our person, which is only 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 289 

effected by the Holy Spirit in the regenerate. When, how- 
ever, this divine illumination has once become actual, at 
least in its beginnings, our consciousness is able to appro- 
priate to itself logically also the content taken up by 
faith. Not in the sense that every believer is able to think 
out in a clear way the entire content of revelation. This 
is only done by all believers together. After these many 
centuries, this task is still by no means completed. Person- 
ally this enlightening simply means that, according to the 
peculiarities of his person, according to his needs and the 
measure of his gifts, every believer understands everything 
that is necessary for confession. Under the influence of 
divine illumination, this logical action therefore does not 
direct itself to the entire field of revelation, but to its cen- 
tral content, while the knowledge which extends itself also 
to a part at least of the periphery is only the possession of a 
ver}' few. Moreover, this logical action does by no means 
effect a clear understanding with all, but gives each the 
insight suited to the peculiar susceptibility of his person, 
which is entirely different with a humble day-laborer from 
what it is with the scholar. But as a result so much 
knowledge of God in each case is obtained as corresponds to 
the clearness of each consciousness. 



Next to this individual insight into the content of revela- 
tion, no less attention should be paid to the logical action 
which brings the content of revelation to clearness in thsit gen- 
eral understanding, which in turn serves and enriches personal 
knowledge. The foundation for this is laid by apostolic reve- 
lation, which affords us a more varied and distinguishing look 
into the wisdom of Christ. This does not imply that the 
apostles offered us an3^thing that falls under the conception 
of scientific Theology. He who makes this assertion totally 
underestimates their authority. But in their writings the 
lines are indicated along which the logical activity of the 
so-called scientific Theology must conduct itself through all 
ages. Thus they indicate Avhat the content of revelation is, 



290 §60. ECTYPAL THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

as well as the relation in wliich this content as a whole 
stands to the past, to the antithetical powers, and to personal 
faith and practice. This apostolic knowledge is, therefore, 
the complement of revelation itself, since this revelation would 
be incomplete if it did not itself produce the roots from 
which the understanding must develop itself. This develop- 
ment can only follow when it finds its point of departure in 
revelation itself. Even then this development is not left to 
abstract and independent thought, but remains dependent 
upon the in working and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The 
human logos, as weakened by sin, can certainly deal with the 
content of this revelation, as has been the case in all ages ; 
but as soon as this movement has reached out after something 
more than a mere superficiality, it has become at once anti- 
thetical, has placed itself in opposition to revelation, and has 
sought, and' still seeks, logically to destroy it. Hence the 
development we referred to can only come from that circle in 
which the divine illumination operates, and the logical action 
of the circle outside of this can only serve to stimulate 
the action of those who have been enlightened and to 
make them careful of mistakes. Since in the circle of the 
"enlightened" the Holy Spirit operates not merely in in- 
dividuals, but also in groups and in the whole circle, it 
is actually the Holy Spirit who, as "the teacher of the 
Church," interprets the content of revelation, and so en- 
riches and purifies the knowledge of God ; not, however, by 
the suppression of logical action, but by stimulating and 
by employing it as its instrument. The necessary outcome 
of this is that this working is not perfect; that it propels 
itself by all sorts of vibrations between truth and error; that 
it only gradually obtains more firmness, and finally results 
in the dogma of the Church. 

But even this does not end the task of the logical action. 
The understanding of Revelation must be taken up into the 
general understanding, from which of itself the need arises 
of giving an organic place in the unit of our knowledge to 
that knowledge of God lodged in the regenerate, and which 
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church, in deadly 



Chap. I] THE FRUIT OF REVELATION 291 

conflict, has formulated into dogma. Our knowledge of the 
cosmos and of revelation must not merely be brought into 
practical harmony for the sake of the life of faith, but in 
the human consciousness as such it must also become an 
organic whole, and thus Theology rise as a science : first, 
in the scholastic sense, so long as it serves no other pur- 
pose than the justification of the content of Theology at 
the tribunal of thought; after that, polyhistorically^ when 
it swarms upon every sort of flower-bed that stands in less 
or more relation to Theology; and finally, in the organic 
sense, when it places its subjective action, as well as its 
given object, in their relation to our world of thought and 
the world of other objects. Thus only can that which is at 
first potential knowledge unfold itself to a complete and 
actual science. 

But in this process, from start to finish, it is ever and 
always Theology in its proper sense, i.e. the knowledge of 
God divinely given, that is taken up into our consciousness, 
and is reflected from our consciousness (personal as well as 
general). Hence nothing is significant to Theology, because 
nothing belongs to it organically, but that which interprets 
this "knowledge of God" in its origin, content, significance, 
working and tendency. 

By way of recapitulation, therefore, we arrive at what 
was stated in our fourth proposition, viz. that ectypal Theol- 
ogy, as revealed by God Himself, is the same in all its 
stages ; and that special revelation, i.e. revelation to the 
sinner, is only modified to the extent that now it can also be 
known what God is willing to be to the sinner. That, fur- 
ther, this development of revelation goes hand in hand with 
an accommodation to the lost condition of the sinner, so that 
now revelation does not work from within outward, but 
makes its approach from the outer world to the inner life 
of man, and that the logical action goes out from the central 
ego of Christ, and thus only benefits the individual subject 
in the personal believer. And that finally, for the sake of 
the assimilation of this knowledge of God by the sinner, his 
unbelief must be changed to a faith in Christ, which is only 



292 § 61. CONCEPTION OF [Div. Ill 

possible through, at least a potential, palingenesis of his 
whole being. 

And thus we reach the point which renders the forming 
of the conception of Theology as science^ possible, and which 
will be considered in the following section. 

§ 61. Conception of Theology as Science 

Like every other science, the science of Theology can be 
spoken of in a twofold sense, viz. either with reference to the 
intellectual labor expended upon Theology, or with reference 
to the results of that labor. In the latter sense, Theology as 
science also remains the knowledge of Grod ; for though its 
result is not an increase of the knowledge of God, and can 
only lead to a clearer insight into the revealed knowledge of 
God, yet every gain in clearness of insight magnifies the 
worth of that knowledge. The microscope adds nothing to 
the wing of the butterfly, but enables me to obtain a richer 
knowledge of that wing. And while the science of Theology 
adds no new knowledge of God to the knowledge revealed 
to us, scientific Theology renders my fuller assimilation of 
its content possible. 

Whether this scientific insight into the knowledge of God 
is possible and necessary, depends upon the stage of develop- 
ment which has been reached by the human consciousness. 
In fact, in the sense in which we now interpret the domain 
of theological studies as one organic whole, the science of 
Theology has only been born in our century. Even down to 
the middle of the last century, while there was a Theology, as 
Dogmatics, with which other studies were connected, yet the 
necessity was not felt of moulding these into one organic 
whole, and still less the impulse to conjoin this unit of 
Theology organically with the other sciences into one archi- 
tectural whole of science. This was not accidental, but the 
immediate consequence of the general spirit of the times. 
This same phenomenon presented itself not only in the 
domain of Theology, but in the domain of every other 
science. The Encyclopedia of Theology had already made 
considerable advances, while all encyclopedical insight into 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS SCIENCE 293 

the psychical and medical sciences was still entirely wanting, 
and in the philological and juridical sciences it had scarcely 
yet begun. Impelled by its own exceptional position, as 
well as by the alarming attitude the other sciences assumed 
against it. Theology was the first to give itself an account 
of its place and of its calling. For the greater part of the 
last century, however, this attempt bore an apologetic char- 
acter; and only when, by and after Kant, the question about 
the essence and the method of our knowledge, and conse- 
quently of the nature of science in general, pressed itself 
forcefully to the front, in our human consciousness, was there 
gradually adopted the organic interpretation of Theology as 
a whole and as one of the sciences in the great unit of the 
sciences, which is now dominant in the Theological faculty, 
and is being more widely recognized by the other faculties. 
Formerly a science of Theology in that sense was not neces- 
sary^ because the human consciousness in general did not 
feel the need of such an interpretation; neither was it pos- 
sible^ because the data for such a construction of Theology, 
and of all the other sciences, cannot be borrowed from the 
knowledge of God, but from Logic in the higher sense. 

Hence the conception, which was formed of Theology in 
the academic sense, has certainly been modified. Theology, 
taken in the subjective sense, was understood to be our 
human insight into the revealed knowledge of God, and 
this insight was graded as the subject chanced to be a lay- 
man, a scholar, or more especially a theologian ; but even in 
this highest sense Theology was limited to Dogmatics, gen- 
erally with Ethics included. This learned insight into the 
revealed knowledge of God was for the most part explained 
after the scheme of Aristotle or Peter Ramus, and defended 
against all objections. This study alone was called Theol- 
ogy, besides which some theologians would study Church 
History and other similar branches ; but the relation of all 
these to real Theology was merely mechanical. At present, 
however, the name of Theolog}^ covers the entire realm of 
these studies; there is no rest until a starting-point for 
Theology has been found in the unit of science ; and, in this 



294 §61. CONCEPTION OF [Div. Ill 

connection, the effort is also made to understand organically 
the essence of Theology itself. 

It is evident that this has given rise to a serious danger 
of falsifying the nature of Theology. As what used to 
count as the whole of Theology has been classed as a mere 
part, the tendency was bound to exhibit itself to seek 
the heart of Theology no longer in its principal factor, 
but in its auxiliary departments; and similarly when the 
articulation of Theology to the organism of science is traced, 
of necessity its Nature can no longer be explained simply 
from its own principle alone, but also from the general prin- 
ciple of science. Both these dangers have shown themselves 
and have brought their evil with them ; even to such a meas- 
ure that in the conceptions of Theolog}^, as severally formed 
in our times, scarcely a trace of the original significance re- 
mains. This compels us to hold fast, tooth and nail, to the 
original meaning ; and therefore, starting out from the idea 
of Theology, we have made a transition from the idea to the 
concejytion of Theology, in which the conception of the knowl- 
edge of God remains the principal part. 

The way in which the several departments of theological 
study are organically related to this knowledge of God can 
only be slioiun when we come to consider the organism of 
Theology; here, however, this organic relation is merely 
assumed^ so that we do not even say which departments of 
study do and which do not find a place in this organic unit. 
At present we only speak of a certain group of studies which 
together have announced themselves as a theological science, 
and are recognized as such at the great majority of universi- 
ties. This group of departments offers a scientific treat- 
ment of all sorts of material, which, however widely they 
may differ, must nevertheless be bound together by a com- 
mon motive. This motive neither can nor may be anything 
else but the idea of Theology itself, and hence must be con- 
tained in the knowledge of God revealed to us. If for a mo- 
ment, therefore, we dismiss from our thoughts the division of 
departments, and thus picture to ourselves the theological 
science as one ivhole^ "this revealed knowledge of God," and 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS SCIENCE 295 

this alone, is its object of investigation. This investiga- 
tion would be superfluous if this knowledge of God were 
revealed to us in a dialectic, discursive form. Then, indeed, 
the human mind would be released from all necessity for 
assimilating this knowledge of God. But such is not the 
case. The knowledge of God is revealed to us in a veiled 
form, just such as was necessary in order that it might be 
A^alid for every age and people, for every time of life, grade 
of development, and condition. Not the dialectically acute 
Greek, but the mystic-symbolic man from the East, was 
chosen as the instrument to reveal to us this knowledge of 
God. Hence a considerable distance still separates this 
knowledge of God, as it has been revealed, from the world 
of the entirely clarified human consciousness, and the con- 
sciousness of man has yet to perform a giant's task, before it 
has appropriated the treasures of that Revelation with trans- 
parent purity and has reflected it from itself. 

This labor, therefore, is nevertheless not scientific labor in 
its entire extent. There are lower grades in the develop- 
ment of our consciousness, which, though they do not bear 
the scientific stamp, are yet productive of early fruit. The 
assimilation of the revealed knowledge of God by our human 
consciousness has gone through all these grades. There is a 
labor of thought devoted to this knowledge of God, which 
has had for its exclusively practical purpose the persuasion of 
him who stands afar off to confess Christ. There is a labor of 
thought expended upon this Revelation with no other purpose 
than to defend it against opposition and heresy. This knowl- 
edge of God has been reflected upon by the human conscious- 
ness in the personal application of it to one's own condition 
and experience of soul. Human power of thought has entered 
upon this knov/ledge of God in preparation for preaching 
and catechizing. No less in the formulation of dogma has 
human power of intellect labored in the sweat of its brow. 
And all that national acumen and the spirit of a given age, 
or the sense of a peculiar confession, could produce in rich 
variation has been applied with indefatigable diligence 
and indomitable perseverance to cause the beauty of this 



296 §61. CONCEPTION OF [Div. Ill 

"knoAvledge of God" to glisten to its utmost in the prism 
of our human thought. But all this, however excellent and 
rich, is not yet what we understand by Theology as science. 
Of this we can speak only when our intellect does not per- 
form mere menial service for other purposes, but when in 
our consciousness itself awakens the sense of its higher call- 
ing, viz. to transmute the mechanic relation between itself 
and its object into an organic one. Of course, this does not 
imply that science should exist merely for the sake of knowl- 
edge, and that in entire self-sufficiency it should lose itself 
in abstractions. On the contrary, science also, as a sphere of 
the Logos, is called as a creature of God to serve its Creator, 
and its high and practical purpose in our behalf is, that it 
should emancipate us, afford us an independent position in 
the face of threatening powers, and that thus it should ad- 
vance our human existence to higher estates. This, however, 
can only be more fully explained when we come to consider 
concretely the place of Theology in the whole organism of sci- 
ence. For the forming of the conception of Theology, it is 
sufficient if it is seen that the science of Theology can flour- 
ish as a plant by itself only when our human consciousness 
takes the reins in its own hands and becomes aware of its 
sacred calling to melt the ore of this " revealed knowledge of 
God " into shining gold, in order, apart from every incidental 
aim, as soon as this task is done, to place the fruit of its 
labor at the disposal of the higher aim to which its labor es- 
pecially must be directed. 

But because this science engages itself with theologia, 
i.e. the knowledge of God, as its object, it could not claim 
the name of Theology^ if it were not included in the plan of 
Revelation and in the nature of this knowledge of God that 
the Logos in this higher sense should be one of the means to 
enrich our subjective insight into this ectypal knowledge of 
God. For which reason we mentioned the fact, in our dis- 
cussion of Revelation, that it is also the calling of the logical 
activity to introduce this knowledge of God into the general 
subject of re-created humanity. Christ is no doubt this gen- 
eral subject in its central sense, on which account, as shown 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS SCIENCE 297 

above, " wisdom " is given in Him ; but this is still entirely 
different from the " understanding " of the general subject of 
humanity in the general human consciousness. Only when 
from the central subject (Christ) this "wisdom " has entered 
into individual believers and into circles of believers of 
different times is it possible that, from these individual and 
social insights into the wisdom of God, a different kind of 
insight can gradually be formed as "understanding," which 
cannot rest until it has become adequate to the content of 
the wisdom which was in the central human consciousness, 
i.e. in Christ. But even if for a moment we imagine the 
unattainable ideal that the content of each were adequate, 
yet the nature of each would be entirely different ; what was 
"wisdom" in Christ as the central subject would have be- 
come "understanding " and "science " in the general subject 
of -regenerated humanity; and it is the science of Theology 
alone that can lead to "understanding " in this given sense. 
As in every domain science, by the establishing of the gen- 
eral human consciousness, unveils the possibility of single 
persons and individual groups, broadening their insight and 
clarifying it, such is also the case here. The more the sci- 
ence of Theology succeeds in giving theology to the general 
subject of regenerated humanity, and thus in bringing this 
general subject to the knowledge of God, the more clearly 
does it open the way to the churches and to believers to attain, 
at least so far as the intellect is concerned, to a fuller knowl- 
edge of God, and thus to a better theology. Even as science 
it adds its contribution to the subjective assimilation of the 
knowledge of God within its appointed sphere, and so derives 
its right to claim for itself the name of Theology, Thus it 
presents itself to us as a logical activity, which transfers 
ectypal knowledge of God from Revelation, as " understand- 
ing," into the general subject of (regenerated) humanity. 

Meanwhile this qualification of regenerated humanity 
demands a fuller explanation. God does not love indi- 
vidual persons, but the luorld. His election does not aban- 
don the human race to perdition, merely to save individuals, 
and to unite these as atoms to an aggregate under Christ; 



298 §61. CONCEPTION OF [Div. Ill 

but He saves humanity^ He redeems our race^ and if all of 
our race are not saved, it is because they who are lost are 
cut off from the tree of humanity. There is no organism 
in hell, but an aggregate. In the realm of glory, on the 
other hand, there is no aggregate but the "body of Christ," 
and hence an organic whole. This organic whole is no 
new "body," but the original organism of humanity, as 
it was created under Adam as its central unity. Therefore 
the Scripture teaches that Christ is the second Adam, i.e. 
that Christ in His way now occupies the same place in 
the human race which was originally occupied by Adam. 
Hence it is not something else nor something new, but it 
is the original human race, it is humanity, which, recon- 
ciled and regenerated, is to accomplish the logical task of 
taking up subjectively into its consciousness this revealed 
ectypal Theology, and to reflect it from that consciousness. 
Whatever a man may be, as long as he does not share the 
life and thought of this regenerated humanity, he cannot 
share this task. " The natural man receiveth not the things 
of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: 
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually dis- 
cerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14). Our consciousness is connected with 
our being. Without palingenesis there is no adaptation of our 
consciousness conceivable, which would enable it to assimi- 
late or reflect ectypal Theologj^, and it is only by the 
"enlightening," as the result of palingenesis, that our con- 
sciousness receives the susceptibility for this. As in the 
general subject of humanity the spirit of man (to Trvevfjua) is 
the real agent, so in the general subject of humanity, or in 
the body of Christ, the spirit (irvev/jLa) in this body, i.e. the 
Holy Spirit, is the inner animator. And therefore the 
science of Theology is a task which must be accomplished, 
under the leading of the Holy Spirit, by regenerated human- 
ity, and by those from among its ranks who, being partakers 
of palingenesis, and enriched by "enlightening," have also 
in their natural disposition those special talents which are 
necessary for this intellectual task. 

That the science of Theology is thereby not isolated nor 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS SCIENCE 299 

cut off from the common root of all science, can only be 
explained when we consider the organism of Theology. 
Here we affirm that in every domain palingenesis revivifies 
the original man as "a creature of God," and for no single 
moment abandons what was given in the nature of man. Sin 
tries to turn the excellencies of this nature into their 
opposites, but this fatal effect of sin has been restrained by 
common grace; and where particular grace renders this 
restraint potentially complete, and at the same time poten- 
tially recovers original purity, from the nature of the case 
the action of the Spirit in the sphere of palingenesis remains 
identical with the action of the Logos in human nature, and 
joins itself to the common grace, which has called all science 
into being, at every point of investigation. 

The science of Theology, therefore, is nothing but a 
specialization of what is given in the idea of Theology. It 
is not all Theology, neither may all subjective assimilation 
of ectypic knowledge of God be appropriated by it. Among 
the different assimilations of this knowledge of God, Theol- 
ogy as a science occupies a place of its own, which is defined 
by its nature as an organic member in the unit of sciences. 
And thus we come to this conception of Theology, viz. that it 
is that science which has the revealed knowledge of God as 
the object of its investigation, and raises it to " understand- 
ing." Or in broader terms, the science of Theology is that 
logical action of the general subject of regenerated humanity 
by which, in the light of the Holy Spirit, it takes up the 
revealed knowledge of God into its consciousness and from 
thence reflects it. If, on the other hand, the science of The- 
ology is not taken in its active sense, but as a product, then 
Theology is the scientific insight of the regenerated human 
consciousness into the revealed knowledge of God. 

This conception diverges entirely from what the several 
schools at present understand by Theology as a science ; and 
this compels us, in defence of our definition, to investigate 
first the several degenerations of Theology as knowledge of 
Grod, and then the several falsifications of the conception 
of Theology as science. 



300 §62. DEGENERATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

§ 62. Degenerations of Theology as '■^Knowledge of God^^ 

The idea and significance of Theology has been corrupted 
in two respects : on the one hand with reference to Theol- 
ogy as "knowledge of God," and on the other with reference 
to Theology as "science." This section treats of the first 
kind of degeneration, and the following of the falsification 
of Theology as science. 

With reference to the degeneration of Theology, taken in 
the sense of "knowledge of God," we must begin with 
Natural Theology (theologia naturalis), since only in view 
of this natural knowledge of God can there be any question 
of Theology with those who reject special revelation (reve- 
latio specialis). It is common in our times to seek the tie 
Avhich unites the higher life of pagan nations to our own, in 
religion. A general conception of religion is then placed in 
the foreground. It is deemed that in this general sense 
religion is present in almost all these nations. Affinity is 
observed among their several religions, but also a gradual 
difference. In all this it is thought that a process is percep- 
tible, and it is by means of this many-sided process that the 
Christian religion is brought into relation to these lower 
forms. We do not take this way, because religion and 
knowledge of God are not the same, and it is in the latter 
that Theology finds its only point of departure. Religion 
can be interpreted as a sense, a service, or an obligation, but 
in none of these is it identical with the "knowledge of God." 
This is most strongly emphasized by the pious agnostic who 
claims himself to be religious, and yet on principle excludes 
all knowledge of God. The loss from sight of this specific 
difference between religion and Theology accounts for the 
fact, that even in the science of Theology religion has been 
put in the place of its original object. 

This compels us to seek the tie that binds us to pagan 
nations, not in the phenomenal side of their religious life- 
expressions, but, along with Scripture, in natural Theology ; 
which at the same time offers this advantage, not to be 
despised, that we need not confine ourselves to the national 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS "KNOWLEDGE OF GOD" 301 

forms of ritual, but can also deal with the theology which, 
outside of these rituals, can be observed in their mysteries 
and in their poets and philosophers. It is well said, that 
even the most repulsive idolatry stands in organic relation 
to the purest revelation. There is a generic unity, which in 
former times was too greatly lost from sight, and is still 
overlooked too much, especially by Methodism ; overlooked 
also in the work of missions. The purest confession of 
truth finds ultimately its starting-point in the seed of re- 
ligion (semen religionis), which, thanks to common grace, 
is still present in the fallen sinner ; and, on the other hand, 
there is no form of idolatry so low, or so corrupted, but has 
sprung from this same semen religionis. Without natural 
Theology there is no Ahha^ Father^ conceivable, any more than 
a Moloch ritual. In so far, then, we agree in principle with 
the present day Science of Religion (Religionswissenschaft). 
On the other hand, we place ourselves in direct opposition to 
it, as soon as it tries to fill in the interval between this Abba, 
Father, and the Moloch ritual with the undulations of a grad- 
ually advancing process. There is here no transition nor 
gradual development, but an antithesis between the positive 
and negative working of a selfsame power. With natural 
Theology it is the same as it is with faith and ethics. Ethi- 
cal life knows only one normal development, viz. that to 
holiness; but over against this positive stands the negative 
development along the line of sin. Sin is an " actual depri- 
vation," and not merely a want (carentia), and therefore it is 
virtue turned into its opposite, and such by the negative work- 
ing of all the glorious power which by nature belongs to the 
ethical life. Likewise unbelief, as shown above, is no want 
of faith, but an actuosa privatio fidei, i.e. the power of faith 
turned into its opposite. And in the same way idolatry 
also is no outcome of the imagination, nor of factors in 
the human consciousness that gradually develop themselves, 
but of an actuosa privatio of the natural knowledge of God. 
In the idolater both the motive and the content of this natu- 
ral theology are turned into their opposites. It is the same 
wheel, turning itself on the same pivot, but in a reverse or 



302 §62. DEGENERATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

averse direction. The Christian Religion and Paganism do 
not stand related to each other as the higher and lower 
forms of development of the same thing ; but the Christian 
religion is the highest form of development natural theology 
was capable of along the positive line ; while all paganism 
is a development of that selfsame natural theology in the 
negative direction. Christendom and Paganism stand to 
each other as the plus and minus forms of the same series. 

From this it appears that natural theology is not taken 
by us in that worn-out sense in which, at the close of the 
seventeenth century, a barren scheme of individual truths 
was framed, which was made to stand as natural theology 
alongside of the supernatural. Natural theology is with 
us no schema, but the knowledge of God itself, which 
still remains in the sinner and is still within his reach, 
entirely in harmony with the sense of Rom. i. 19 sq. 
and Rom. ii. 14 sq. Sin, indeed, is an absolute dark- 
ening power, and were not its effect temporarily checked, 
nothing but absolute darkness would have remained in and 
about man ; but common grace has restrained its workings to 
a very considerable degree ; also in order that the sinner 
might be without excuse. In consequence of this common 
grace there remain the rudera or sparks of light in the sinner, 
and the curse upon nature has not yet come in such measure 
but that " invisible things " are clearly seen, because under- 
stood by the things that are made (Rom. i. 20). Hence the 
condition of man and his world are not such as they would 
have been if sin had at once accomplished its end; but, 
thanks to common grace, both are of such a character that 
knowledge of God is still possible, either by way of tradi- 
tion, or as the result of personal insight, such as has been 
found in generous measures in the midst of paganism, in its 
mysteries as well as with its poets and philosophers. But, 
and this is the point, instead of clinging fast to this, the 
sinner in general has played a wilful game with this fruit 
of common grace, and consequently his "foolish heart" has 
become entirely "foolishness" and "darkness." And only 
as result of this abuse which the sinner has made of natural 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS "KNOWLEDGE OF GOD" 303 

theology, God at last has "given him over," as Paul reiterates 
it three times in Rom. i. God has let go His hold upon 
him ; and in consequence of this desertion of God the curse 
of self-degradation and of brutishness has come upon pagan- 
ism, and now constitutes its real mark. 

Hence two mistakes have here been made, and two errors 
are to be guarded against. Our older theologians have too 
greatly ignored paganism, and have explained it too ex- 
clusively from a demoniacal motive, and thereby have not 
allowed the organic relation to show itself sufficiently, 
which unmistakably exists between true and false theology, 
as the normal and abnormal working of one and the same 
impelling principle ; while, on the other hand, it is the 
error of our times to abandon the antithesis of true and false, 
to identify the two, and to prefer the form of the process of 
development to this organic relation. If formerly they 
failed per defectum^ we now fail per excessum. And true 
insight into the organic relation between true Theology and 
Paganism is only obtained when the antithesis is fully rec- 
ognized between the positive and negative development of 
common grace. There is here also an antithesis between 
true and degenerate development, which the more they 
progress, the farther they separate from each other, — an 
antithesis which is in no single particular a lesser one than 
that between good and evil, as both expressions of the one 
ethical principle implanted in us all. 

We do not deny that a process has taken place ; only this 
process is twofold. As at the fork in the road where good and 
evil separate a twofold process begins, of which one leads to 
an ever richer revelation of that which is holy, and the other 
to an ever sadder exhibition of that which is demoniacal in 
sin, such also is here the case. From the times of Abraham 
the lines of true and false theology separate. Not as 
though this antithesis did not exist before; but because at 
this point the two manifestations assume each an historic 
form of its own. And from this point we have on the one 
hand a development of true theology, which reaches poten- 
tially its acme in Christ, and on the other hand also a 



304 § 62. DEGENERATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

deterioration of false theology, which in a negative sense 
must likewise run its course to the end. In another 
volume this will be more fully explained. Here we can 
only locate the point of view where one must stand, in order 
that the organic relation between our own confession and 
that of Paganism may fully exhibit itself again, and at the 
same time the danger be avoided of weakening the distinc- 
tion between these two to a relative difference. 

To preclude the possible objection, that the theology of 
Greek philosophy stands higher and approaches nearer to 
the truth than the Animistic and Fetishistic forms of 
paganism, we observe; first, that it should not be consid- 
ered proper to link the theological representations of a negro 
tribe to those of a people so highly cultured as that which 
gave being to Greek philosophy. The hypothesis that all 
nations have begun with Animism, and have gradually 
mounted the several rounds of the scale, is entirely unsup- 
ported. Our second observation is, that dissimilar magni- 
tudes cannot be compared, and hence the cultus-forms of 
any people cannot be compared to the theological teach- 
ings (theologumena) of philosophers. For comparison the 
cultus-forms of paganism must be contrasted with the practi- 
cal religion of these philosophers, and their theological teach- 
ings with the ideas concerning the infinite and its workings 
which are fundamental to the cultus-forms of the nations 
of lower standing, or of the Greeks. By which comparison 
it appears at once that the philosophers had no cultus-forms, 
and obtained them only when in "Neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, 
etc., they had adopted elements from the Christian religion. 
This shows that Natural Theology operated in them more as 
an intellectual power than as a devotional impulse, — a fact 
which of itself leads to our third observation, viz. that 
however high, from an intellectual point of view, the theo- 
logical teachings of Greek philosophy may stand, in the main 
they exhibit a much stronger deterioration of the true 
knowledge of God, inasmuch as they destroyed the feeling 
of dependence, in place of which, in Stoicism, they substi- 
tuted human self-sufficiency. In the negro, who trembles as 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY AS "KNOWLEDGE OF GOD'' 305 

he kneels before his Fetish, there is more of the fear of God 
than in the proud philosopher, who reasons about the gods 
(or about to Oelov) as about powers, of which he will deter- 
mine what they are. In the negro there is still a consider- 
able degree of vitality of the seed of religion, while in the 
self-sufficient philosopher it is dead. He reasons ; in how- 
ever imperfect a way, the negro worships. 

As Christian Ethics not only deals with the positive 
development of good, but reckons as well with the negative 
development of evil, Clmstian theology also is not to con- 
fine itself to the study of true theology, but must also deal 
with false theology in paganism; and this it must do not 
merely for the sake of making obvious the monstrosity 
of pagan representations, — this, indeed, would not be a 
proper interpretation of its task, — but rather that it may 
show that this paganism also is born of natural theology, 
and discover the law which this false development has 
obeyed. There is no single datum in idolatry, which is 
inherent in it, but has sprung from natural theology. Of 
course this does not underestimate the inworking of tradi- 
tion from paradise, nor the influence exerted by Israel. 
When the antithesis between true and false theology is 
sharply seen, the true must have preceded the false, and 
idolatry can be nothing else than deterioration; which 
implies of itself that, as with all deterioration^ some 
elements of the originally pure development still co- 
operate. And with reference to the inworking of special 
revelation, it should not be lost from sight, that from the 
days of Abraham, the people of revelation have ever been 
in touch with the surrounding nations, and that extensive 
journeys, for the sake of finding out what other nations 
taught concerning Divine things, suited entirely the spirit 
of the ancients. With this purpose in vicAv the passes of 
the Himalaya were crossed from China to the Ganges. Add 
to this the great significance and calling of the empire of 
Solomon, and the fact that the prophets appeared long be- 
fore the Greek philosophers, and it betrays little historical 
sense, when a i^riori all effect of Israel upon paganism 



306 §63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

and pagan philosophy is denied. But this after-effect of 
tradition, as well as that possible inworking of Israel, are 
accidental. They are not inherent in the contrary process 
of natural theology in its deterioration. Hence this pro- 
cess itself must be investigated, not for the sake of paying 
homage to the theology of paganism as such, but to show 
that the religious life of these pagan nations was founded 
upon some theology, which as such was not invented, but 
is the necessary result of the sinful development of natural 
theology. 

Islam occupies here a somewhat separate position. Just 
as with Gnosticism and Manichseism, we here deal with a 
unit of theological representations which has special revela- 
tion back of it, and partly included in it. This presents 
three factors for our consideration. First, the contrary 
development of natural theology, which here also forms 
the pagan background. Secondly, the contrary devel- 
opment of supranatural theology, which had an entirely 
peculiar career. And, thirdly, the syncretistic element, 
which united these deteriorations into one. Islam is not 
merely pagan, nor is it merely heretical, but both together, 
and hence it occupies an entirely peculiar place among the 
deteriorations of true theology, in which it now stands alone, 
simply because Manichseism, Gnosticism, etc., as religious 
societies, have passed away. On the other hand, Islam, as 
such, is allied to those theological representations that have 
become current again, especially since the beginning of this 
century, and which have embroidered the flowers of Christian 
revelations upon the tapestry of a radically pagan philosophy. 
With this difference, however, that these philosophic deteri- 
orations have not established religious communions, but have 
invaded the Church of Christ. 

§ 63. Falsifications of the Oonception of Theology 

The falsifications of Theology as science bear an entirely dif- 
ferent character. By these we do not refer to the heretical di- 
vergencies, such as Protestants assert of Romanism, and Eome 
in turn affirms of Protestantism. With every heretical diver- 



Chap. I] THE CO^'CEPTIOX OF THEOLOGY 307 

gence both sides occupy the same point of view as to natural 
theology; from both sides it is confessed that their theology 
is derived from special Revelation ; and the difference arises 
only from the diverging views of this special Revelation. In 
speculative and empiric theology, on the other hand, one is 
met by a falsification, which, from princijole^ denies all 
special Revelation, and thus in reality takes counsel with 
natural theology. Both forfeit thereby the right to the 
name of theology, because in this way speculative theology 
really ends in P]iiloso]jliy^ and empiric theology disappears 
in Naturalism. Natural Theology can exhibit itself as a 
regnant power only when human nature receives the beams of 
its light in their purity and reflects them equally completely. 
At present, however, the glass has been impaired by a liun- 
dred cracks, and the receiving and reflecting have become 
unequal, and the image that was to reflect itself is hindered 
in its clear reflection and thereby rendered untrue. And 
for this reason you cannot depend upon natural theology as 
it works in fallen man; and its imperfect lines and forms 
bring you, through the broken image, in touch with the reality 
of the infinite, only when an accidens enables you to recover 
this defective ideal for yourself, and natural theology re- 
ceives this accidens only in special revelation. Speculative 
and empiric theology are correct, therefore, in their reaction 
against methodistic superficiality, which actually annuls 
natural theology, and accepts special revelation by faith 
as something entirely independent by itself. While, on the 
contrary, it is only by the natural knowledge of God, by 
the semen religionis^ that a special revelation is possible for 
us, that our consciousness can unite itself to it, and that 
certainty can be born of its reality in our sense. Yea, to 
speak still stronger, we may say that special theology is 
merely temporal^ and natural theology eternal. This is not 
stated more boldly than the Scriptures justify, when they 
explain the mutual relation between the special priest- 
hood of the Aaronic ceremonial and the natural priesthood 
of Melchizedek. Melchizedek appears as one standing en- 
tirely outside of the special revelation; he is a priest-king. 



308 § 63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Diy. Ill 

who has natural theology only, together with a weakened 
tradition of the once blessed paradise. Aaron, therefore, on 
whom shone the full light of special revelation, stands far 
above him in knowledge of God, in loftiness of religion, and 
in purity of priestly ritual. With a little less thought one 
would have been tempted to place Aaron's priesthood far 
above that of Melchizedek, in order to find the ideal high- 
priesthood of Christ in Aaron, and not in the order of 
Melchizedek. And yet revelation, in both Old and New 
Testaments, teaches the very contrary. Aaron's ceremonial 
bears merely a temporal character ; Melchizedek's office is 
eternal; and Aaron disappears in Christ, in order that in 
Christ Melchizedek may reappear. Thus Aaron's service 
merely fulfilled the vocation of rendering the service of 
Melchizedek possible again, and enabling it to resume its 
original significance. And this is the point of view which 
dominates also the relation between "natural theology" and 
"particular grace." Undoubtedly the content of special reve- 
lation is much richer than the meagre content which natu- 
ral theology now offers fallen man ; and it is also evident 
that without its accidens in special revelation this natural 
theology is no help to you whatever. Aaron's service was 
much richer than that of Melchizedek, and without the 
Aaronic ordination Melchizedek's offering missed every aton- 
ing merit. But this does not take away the fact, that 
natural theology always remains the originally real one, and 
that special revelation can never be anything else than acci- 
dental. Hence, when it comes to a state of purity, when sin 
shall have been eradicated so that its very memory shall no 
longer work its after-effects in the creation of God, then all 
the riches of special revelation shall merely have served the 
end of bringing natural theology back again to its original 
lustre, yea, of causing it to glow with a brightness which 
far excels its original lustre. In the prophetic domain of the 
knowledge of God, also, Aaron disappears, and Melchizedek 
returns with all the glory of the original creation. This is 
the deep significance of the oath sworn by the Lord in Psalm 
ex., concerning the priest after the order of Melchizedek. 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 309 

Jesus Himself spoke of a future in which His disciples would 
no more ask Him anything, because the Father Himself loved 
them. And in the perspective of 1 Cor. xv., when God 
shall be "all in all," the entire special revelation has receded; 
the object for which it was given has been obtained; and with 
reference also to the knowledge of God, the " all in all " 
expresses nothing else than what once existed in paradise. 
Though this deeper truth was not recognized by Schleier- 
macher, the spiritual father of subjective empiricism, and 
by Hegel, the master thinker, who founded the school of 
recent speculative theology, they perceived it, nevertheless, 
sufficiently clearly to vindicate the primordial authority of 
natural theology. Calvin saw deeper than both, when he 
compared ectypal theology, as thanks to common grace it 
still exists in and for the sinner, to a book the writing of 
which had become blurred, so that it could only be deci- 
phered with a glass, i.e. with the help of special revelation. 
In this figure the thought lies expressed, that the theology 
which reflects itself as such in our nature, is ever the real 
theology, which, however, must be augmented and be ex- 
plained, and which without this assistance remains illegible ; 
but which, even during and after this help, always remains 
the true divine writing. So also it is foretold in prophecy, 
when Jeremiah declared that there was a time coming in 
which the outward special revelation would be ended, and 
every one would bear again in his heart the divine writing, 
and all should know the Lord from the least unto the oldest. 
This, too, is only the representation that the outward special 
revelation merely serves for a time^ and that it has no other 
tendency than to lift natural theology from its degeneracy. 
Natural theology is and always will be the natural pair of 
legs on which we must walk, while special revelation is the 
pair of crutches^ which render help, as long as the weakened 
or broken legs refuse us their service. This indeed can be 
frankly acknowledged, even though it is certain, that as long 
as our legs cannot carry us we can only walk by means of 
the crutches, so that during this abnormal condition our legs 
do not enable us to walk truly in the ways of the Lord, 



310 § 63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

but only our crutches, i.e. not natural theology, but only 
special revelation. This last point has been less denied 
than entirely abolished by Schleiermacher, as well as by 
Hegel, and in so far we deny that the subjective-empiric 
and the speculative schools, which they called into life, are 
able to offer us any real and actual theology. But this does 
not destroy the fact that the motive which impelled them con- 
tained an inward truth. After the Reformation orthodoxy 
withdrew itself all too quickly from general human life. It 
became too greatly an isolated phenomenon, which, however 
beautiful in itself, was too much disconnected ; and when it 
undertook to distil a kind of compendium from the so-called 
natural theology, and in all its poverty to place this by the 
side of the rich display of special revelation, it belittled this 
natural theology to such an extent, that rationalism could not 
fail of its opportunity to show itself and to administer reproof; 
while orthodoxy, removed from its basis, was bound to turn 
into inwardly thin supranaturalism with its external sup- 
ports. Thus there was no longer a scientific theology worthy 
of the name. All that remained was, on the one hand, a mysti- 
cism without clearness, and on the other hand a barren frame- 
work of propositions and facts, without the glow of life or 
of reality. This was observed with great sharpness of 
vision by Schleiermacher, as well as by Hegel, and both 
endeavored to find again, in the reality of life, a 809 fjLot irov 
aroy (starting-point) for religion, and thus also for theology. 
They did this each in his own way : Schleiermacher by 
withdrawing himself into human nature, as religious and 
social in character ; and Hegel, on the other hand, by ex- 
tending the world of human thought so broadly, that theol- 
ogy also found a place in it. From subjectivity, i.e. from 
mysticism, Schleiermacher came to theological thought, Hegel, 
from the thought of man, hence from intellectualism, to re- 
ligion. Thus together they grasped natural reality by the 
two handles which this reality presents for religion. Natu- 
ral theology includes two elements : first, ectypal knowledge 
of God as founded in the human consciousness, and secondly, 
the pistic capacity of man to grasp this ectypal knowledge 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 311 

with his inner consciousness. Hegel made the ectypal 
knowledge of God to appear in the foreground of human 
consciousness ; Schleiermacher, on the other hand, started 
out from the pistic capacity increated in the inner nature 
of man. Hence it is not surprising in the least, that both 
formed a school of their own, and that only by their initia- 
tive theology revived again as a science. They indeed 
abandoned the isolation to which theology had fled. Each 
in his way restored religion and theology to a proper place 
of honor in human life and in the world of thought. By 
their work the " unheimisch " feeling of confusion in the 
face of reality was taken away from the theologian ; he had 
again a standing. The thirst after reality could again be 
quenched. And that even orthodox theologians, whose 
earnest effort it was to maintain by far the greater part of 
the content of special revelation, sought refuge in the two 
schools need not surprise us, for the reason that the strength 
of each lay not so much in their positive data, as in their 
formal view, which to a certain extent was also adapted, if 
needs be, to cover an orthodox cargo. With respect to this 
formal part, Schleiermacher and Hegel even supplemented 
each other. If in Schleiermacher's subjective school the- 
ology was threatened to be sacrificed to religion, and in 
Hegel's speculative tendency to be glorified as the sole 
substance of religion, it was evident that those who were 
more seriously minded foresaw the future of theology in the 
synthesis of both elements. There were two sides to natu- 
ral theology, and only in the combination of Schleiermacher 
and Hegel could natural theology again obtain a hearing in 
its entirety. 

But this whole effort has ended in nothing but bitter dis- 
appointment. Not, as already said, as though in these two 
schools men began at once to cast the content of the special 
revelation overboard. On the contrary, Schleiermacher and 
Hegel both did not rest content with the meagre data of 
natural theology, but made it a point of honor to demand 
the exalted view-point of the Christian religion for its own 
sake, and, so far as they were able, to vindicate it. What 



312 § 63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

good was this, however, when they were bent on explaining, 
at any cost, this ideal view-point of the Christian religion 
from the normal data? The}^ no doubt acknowledged the 
considerable interval between this ideal religion and the 
imperfect religious expression outside of the Christian do- 
main, but they refused to attribute this to the supernatural, 
and thus to what seemed to them the abnormal action of 
the living God. The interval between the highest and 
the lowest was not to be taken any longer as an antithesis, 
but was to be changed into a process, by which gradually 
the highest sprang from the lowest. Thus each in his way 
found the magic formula of the process. From Theism they 
glided off into Pantheism. For thus only was it possible to 
maintain the high honor of the Christian religion, and at 
the same time to place this exalted religion in organic rela- 
tion to the reality of our human existence. And this w^as 
the thing that avenged itself. For from the meagre data 
of natural theology they were not able to operate along 
straight lines, and thus even these fundamental data were 
falsified. This became especially apparent in the school of 
Hegel, when in their way his younger followers tried to 
systematize religion, and soon rendered it evident that, 
instead of vindication, the result, which in this school they 
reached by strict consequence, was the entire undermining 
of historic Christianity and of all positive religions data. 
What Hegel thought he had found was not religion, but 
philosophic theology, and this theology was no true " knowl- 
edge of God," but a general human sense, in which the im- 
manent Spirit (der immanente Geist) gradually received 
knowledge of himself. This did not find archetypal knowl- 
edge in God, but in man, and ectypal knowledge in the 
incomprehensible God. Hence it was the perversion of all 
Theology, and the inversion of the conception of religion 
itself, and both dissolved in a philosophic system. 

Though at first the subjective-empiric school of Schleier- 
macher appeared less dangerous, and though it did not 
lead to those repulsive consequences in which the young 
Hegelians lost themselves, yet even this did not escape its 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 313 

Nemesis, and with fatal necessity tends more and more to 
Naturalism. It did not come to religion from the sphere of 
thought, but sought its connecting point iyi human nature. 
Man, not as individual, but taken as an integral part of the 
organism of humanity, presented himself as a subject with 
certain emotions and perceptions, and bearing a religious char- 
acter; from these perceptions and emotions, by virtue of the 
"social instinct" (Sociale Trieb), which is peculiar to man 
as an organic being, sprang a certain desire after religious 
communion (Verein); and since man inclines to take up his 
emotions and perceptions into his consciousness, there was 
gradually born of this selfsame subjective mysticism a 
world of religious representations. Only with these ethical 
premises at his disposal, does Schleiermacher come to the 
phenomenon of the Christian Church, which, both by way of 
comparison and in principle, seems to satisfy the highest 
aspirations these premises inspire. Faithful to his natural- 
istic interpretation he concedes that it is the vocation of the 
Church to remain the leader of this ethic-social process in 
humanity. This requires elucidation of insight. And so 
he arrives at an interpretation of theology which is nothing 
but an aggregate of disparate sciences, which find their bond 
of union ad hoc in the phenomenon of the Church. 

We readily grant that Schleiermacher did not mean this 
naturalistically. His purpose was to save the ideal life 
of humanity. But we maintain, that this whole inter- 
pretation sprang from the naturalistic root, and is chargeable 
with the naturalistic tendenc}^, which became more strongly 
evident in his followers. Of the three data which he deals 
with, — human nature, God and thought, — he takes human 
nature alone to be autonomic. All that he teaches of God, 
is not merely bound in its form of expression to the data of 
our nature, but the content also is the mere reflection of 
subjective perceptions ; man is and remains the subject, that 
is, thinks and speaks, and in his presence God obtains 
no autonomic position. The reality even of the existence 
of God appears to the very end to be dependent upon the 
reality which vindicates itself in the subject man. The 



314 § 63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

same is true with reference to the factor of thought. With 
Schleiermacher, thought is the result of being, not in the 
absolute sense, but of being in man and of that which 
springs from this being of man. Actually, therefore, 
human nature alone and its phenomena are real for Schleier- 
macher; from this nature only you come to God as to its 
projection; and thought exercises so little independent 
power, that the unconscious senses, feelings and perceptions 
not only govern our entire thought, but even repress it, 
and already prepare the primacy of the will of later date. 
With this, however, Schleiermacher as a theologian had 
passed the handle entirely out of his hands. It is self- 
evident, that the autonomic study of human nature held the 
mastery also over the future of theology. If that physio- 
logical and psychological study should lead to materialistic 
results, the whole of Schleiermacher's religion would fall 
away. Or, where the result was less disappointing, yet so far 
as the method is concerned, the physiological factor was bound 
to dominate entirely the psychological factor, and this would 
also include everything that relates to religion under the 
power of the naturalistic view. In this wise the Christian 
religion was bound to be reduced to the product of all pre- 
ceding religious development; that preceding religious de- 
velopment could at length be nothing more than the necessary 
development of a psychological peculiarity; that ps3^cho- 
logical peculiarity, in turn, must be the result of the fun- 
damental data in our human nature; that human nature 
could be nothing else than the product of the unbroken 
development of organic nature; that organic nature could 
not differ essentially from the inorganic nature; so that 
finally, everything that is high and holy in the Christian 
domain has been brought under the power of the evolution 
theory, and the theologian has to be informed by the 
naturalist where to look for the origin of the object of his 
science. 

Thus, in both schools, everything that had so far been 
known by the name of theology was in principle destroyed. 
There were no longer two, God and man, the former of whom 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 315 

has imparted knowledge of Himself to the latter; there 
was, in fact, nothing else but man, in whom alone, according 
to the speculative school, "the Ever-Immanent Spirit" (der 
ewigimmanente Geist) came to consciousness of himself; and 
who according to the subjective-empiric school, experienced 
subjective perceptions, from which he formed for himself sub- 
jective representations of a religious character. Neither in 
one school nor in the other was there any more question of an 
extrahuman God, nor room for a theology which should be 
able to introduce actual knowledge of that God into the 
general human consciousness. The abandonment of the name 
Theology^ and the substitution in its room of the name of 
Science of Religion^ was nothing but the honest consequence of 
the fundamentally atheistic point of view which was held. 
Is atheistic too strong a word in this connection ? It is, when 
by atheism we understand the denial of the spirit and 
perceptions of the infinite; but not, when we interpret it 
as the refusal longer to recognize the living God, who has 
made Himself known to us as God. Though both schools 
held to the name of God, they both afterward denied that 
we have the right to reckon with the reality of the living 
God, as a personal, self-conscious Being, who from that 
self-consciousness reveals Himself to us. And from that 
time on,' the object that engaged the investigator in this 
domain was no longer the reality God^ but religion. With 
reference to the eternal Being everything had become prob- 
lematic; the religious phenomenon was the only certain 
thing. There revealed itself in human nature and in his- 
tory a mighty factor, which was known by the name of reli- 
gion. It was possible to trace and to study the historic and 
ethnologic .development of this factor; psychologically, also, 
an explanation of this religious phenomenon could be sought; 
and in this- perhaps at length sufficient ground could be 
found to assume a general agent as cause of this phenome- 
non; but no venture could be made outside of this phe- 
nonrenal circle. The vovixevov remained problematic. 

That nevertheless most students shrank from the imme- 
diate adoption of this radical transition, had a threefold 



316 § 63. TALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

cause, — the historic form of our theological faculties, the 
existence of the Christian Church, and the exalted character 
of the Christian religion. By far the larger number of 
theologians of name do not reach their destination except in 
the theological facultj^ That faculty, as an historic institute, 
is bound to the theological name, and more particularly still to 
Christian Theologj^ The revolution which has taken place 
on theologic ground must of necessity either modernize these 
faculties entirely, or perhaps occasion their disappearance, 
and the transfer of their chairs to other faculties. But this is 
not done at once. Every academic institute is conservative. 
And since one cannot wait for this, and meanwhile is not 
willing to abandon the influence of the chair, one adapts 
himself to the inevitable, and continues to call himself a 
theologian, and to speak of theological study, even though 
in the main he has broken with theology, in the historically 
valid sense of the word. The second reason, why the name of 
theology has been maintained, lies in the Christian Church. 
For her sake the Ministers of the Word must be educated. 
If it were not for her, there would be no question after 
pupils for this faculty. Dilettant theologians are becom- 
ing ever more scarce. And thus one had still to adapt 
himself to practical needs in these departments. From a 
scientific point of view the study of other religions might 
promise richer harvests ; but almost no one would frequent 
the lecture-rooms where exegetical readings were given from 
the holy books of other religions. And thus the scientific 
standard had to be abandoned, and for the sake of practical 
needs the old theological tracks are still continued. This is 
indeed an unenviable position, in which self-respect is re- 
gained in part only by the consideration of the third cause 
mentioned above, that is, the relative excellency of the Chris- 
tian religion. Even when, after the fashion of botanists, "we 
treat religion as a flora of poorer and richer types, it is but 
natural that fuller study should be devoted to the religious 
plant of higher development; and, as such, homage is paid 
to the Christian religion. Not generally any longer as the 
highest, for Buddhism, and even Islam, are placed by its side ; 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OF THEOLOGY 317 

and much less as tlie highest conceivable, for in ethics Christ 
is thought to be far excelled, and it is maintained that further 
development is not at all impossible. But in general the 
Christian religion still counts as one of the higher develop- 
ments ; especially as that development, which is of greatest 
interest to us historically, and which, so far as the lower 
classes of people are concerned, is even yet the only one that 
claims our general notice. And thus it comes to pass, that 
this faculty is still called theological, and is still regulated 
with a view to the training of Ministers of the Word for 
the Christian Church, and, though the other religions are 
reviewed, the Christian religion is still the main study pur- 
sued. This is done, in antagonism with principle, for the 
sake of secondary considerations; and it is for this reason 
that the ancient name of Theology is still borne, though 
now as a misnomer, and that the only fitting name for what 
is really meant, that of "science of Religion" (Religionwis- 
senschaft), remains still banished from the official curricu- 
lum. 

In order to restore harmony to a certain extent between 
name and matter, it has been tried in more or less conserva- 
tive circles, to define Theology as "the science of the Chris- 
tian religion " ; which, however much better it may sound 
than Schleiermacher's prudish and unnatural definition, is 
nevertheless equally unable to stand the test of criticism. 
Is there likewise a science of English history? Of French 
philosophy? Of Greek art? Of course not. The science 
of history devotes a chapter to England's national past ; the 
history of philosophy devotes a separate investigation to that 
which has been pondered and reflected upon by French 
thinkers; and the history of sesthetics engages itself espe- 
cially with Greek art ; but no one will undertake to represent 
these parts of a broader object as a proper object for an 
independent science. Hence, in the religious domain also, 
there is no separate science of Parseeism, of Buddhism, of 
Israelitism, of Christianity, or of Islam. He who takes one 
of these phenomena as such as object of investigation, may 
not take it outside of its relation to correlated phenomena, 



318 §63. FALSIFICATIONS OF [Div. Ill 

and can take no stand except in a science which embraces 
these correlated phenomena as a whole. It is unscientific, 
therefore, to speak of a "science of the Christian religion." 
If I confess a Revelation, which has no correlates and which 
is a phenomenon of an entirely singular kind, it may well 
be the object of an independent science. But if one views 
the Christian religion as one of several religions, even 
though it is comparatively the highest of all religious 
developments known to us, he is as unable to create an 
independent science of the Christian religion as the botan- 
ist is to speak of a special science of the cedar. If, on the 
other hand, with other more or less orthodox theologians, 
we assert that the Christian religion is distinguished from 
all other religious phenomena by a special specific revela- 
tion, its distinguishing element is not in the religion^ but 
in the revelation of Christianity, and hence this revelation 
must be the object of this science. 

This was felt by Hodge, the champion of scientific 
orthodox}^ in America, and therefore he tried to escape from 
the dilemma by choosing the facts of the Bible as the object 
of his theolog3^ His intention was good, for in the main 
he was correct in saying that the Holy Scriptures offer us 
no scientific theology, but contain the facts and truths^ 
"which theology has to collect, authenticate, arrange and 
exhibit in their internal relation to each other" (^Syst. 
Theology^ I., p. 1). And yet we may not rest content even 
with Hodge's definition. For in this way the conception of 
" ectypal Theology " is lost, and from all sorts of facts we 
are to conclude what must follow from them with respect to 
the Being of God. His combination of "facts and truths" 
overthrows his own system. He declares that the theologian 
must authenticate these truths. But then, of course, they 
are no truths^ and only become such, when I authenticate 
them. His idea was, of course, to save theology as a positive 
science, and to do this in a better way than they who took 
the "Christian religion" as the given object; but it can 
scarcely be denied that he succumbed to the temptation of 
placing Theology formally in a line with the other sciences. 



Chap. I] THE CONCEPTION OE THEOLOGY 319 

All the other sciences have the data of nature and of history 
for their object, and Theology, in like manner, has the data 
of this supernatural history. There were two spheres, two 
worlds, which have become object of a proper science each. 
That the distinction between God as creator and all the rest 
as His creature draws the deep boundary-line between the- 
ology and all other science, could not be established in this 
way. The authentication of his "facts" brought him logi- 
cally back again under the power of naturalistic science. 
And though as a man of faith he bravely resisted this, his 
demonstration lacked logical necessity. 

Our result is that, though still called by the name of 
theology, the entire subsequent development of theological 
study has actually substituted an utterly different object, 
has cut the historic tie that binds it to original theology, 
and has accomplished little else than the union of the sub- 
divisions of psychology and of historic ethnology into a new 
department of science, which does not lead to the knowledge 
of God, but aims at the knowledge of religion as a phe- 
nomenon in the life of humanity. Along this way also the 
return was made to natural theology, and whatever was 
still valid as " Christian revelation " was cited to legiti- 
matize itself before the tribunal of natural theology. The 
harniony between the results of these modern investigations, 
and those derived in former ages from natural theology in 
India and elsewhere, could therefore arouse no surprise in 
the least. This only should be added, that the exchange of 
theologia naturalis for religio naturalis accounts for the loss 
with us of what the Vedanta still maintains, viz. the divine 
reality, which corresponds to the impressions and percep- 
tions of the religiously disposed mind. 

§ 64. Deformations of Theology 

If the effort to obtain Divine knowledge from natural 
theology, without the help of special revelation, was bound, 
after the fall, to effect the entire deterioration of the knowl- 
edge of God ; and if, on the other hand, the effort to substi- 
tute religion as object of investigation for the " knowledge of 



320 § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY [Uiv. Ill 

God" was bound to falsify the conception of theology; the 
evil worked within the theological domain by what we call 
its deformatio7is, the results of schism and heresy, is of an 
entirely different character. The difference is still clearly 
evident between what is called Protestant, Romish and 
Greek or Eastern Theology; and though on Protestant 
ground the antithesis between the Lutheran and Reformed 
type of doctrine is less significant than before, it is self- 
deception to suppose that it has become extinct; while, 
on the other hand also, the variegations of the mystic- 
apocalyptic and the pietistic-methodistic mode of teaching 
still maintain themselves in ever wider Protestant circles. 
The illusion that the former confessional differences have 
had their day, in order gradually to make room for a general 
Protestant sense, scarcely held itself intact for a quarter of 
a century. It was evident all too soon, that this indiffer- 
ence to confessional standards sprang from an unhistoric ten- 
dency and was fed by an exceedingly serious hypertrophy of 
the philosophic element. Almost everywhere, therefore, we 
see the revival of confessional standards in theology, the 
moment it escapes from the arms of philosophy, and, for the 
sake of defending its position, is bent upon the recovery of 
its independence. This, however, makes it necessary, just 
as our fathers did before us, to deal with the deformations 
of Theology. 

This conception of deformation excludes, on our side, two 
untenable points of view : first, the sceptical, which attributes 
no higher worth to Protestant Theology than to the Romish 
or Eastern, and evermore tends to place these in a line ; and 
secondly, the absolute, which counts out every other theology 
but its own as worthless, and frankly declares them to have 
originated with the Evil One. 

The sceptical point of view falls short in faith, decision 
and courage of conviction. Here, in reality, one takes truth 
as something that lies beyond human reach; hence one's own 
confession also is valued no higher than as an effort to express 
truth, which from the nature of the case has met with ill suc- 
cess. One feels his way in the dark, and hence must readily 



Chap. I] § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY 321 

concede others the right of doing the same. Their confes- 
sion and yours contain equally little or much of worth, just as 
you please. They are variations of the same theme. Each 
of these variations enrich and complement, and you stand 
personally higher, just in proportion as being less narrow in 
the attachment to your own confession, you have an open eye 
and ear to rejoice in all expressions of life. This is not 
meant to be taken eclectically, for since you have no favorite 
flower, you gather no bouquet from the several confessions, 
but simply walk among the several flower-beds to enjoy what- 
ever is beautiful in this confessional garden. All this lacks 
seriousness of purpose. From this view-point every form of 
confession becomes an article of luxury. Confessional life 
aims no longer at truth, but serves as a kind of poetry. 
In the life of his emotions one experiences certain pious per- 
ceptions ; one also seeks a certain mj^stical communion with 
the hidden world of the infinite ; and in so far as one accepts 
the reality of that world, he is seriously minded; but he has 
no faith in what he himself expresses or in what he hears 
others say concerning it. It does not become us, it is said, 
to do anything but stammer. No significance, therefore, 
should be attached to the sounds, forms, or words which we 
speak, as though these expressed the higher reality. At most 
these sounds have the worth of a musical character. They 
give utterance to our better feelings, and presently aid to 
revive them again. But for this very reason, the song 
which another sings from his heart is equally beautiful. 
There is no more truth to be confessed. All that remains 
is a pious, aesthetic enjoyment of what has been stammered 
by man in all manner of ways concerning the truth. A 
Calvinistic prayer, which drinks in encouragement for higher 
life from the fountain of eternal election, impresses, from this 
point of view, equally strongly as the Ave verum corpus of 
the Romish worshipper, as he kneels before the uplifted 
host. 

This sceptical point of view, therefore, should not be 
confounded with the mystical antithesis, which opposes all 
dogma, all confessions and also all special revelation. This 



322 § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

mystic antithesis springs from the tendency to let being 
triumph over consciousness, and, while it apparently an- 
tagonizes barren intellectualism, in reality it opposes every 
modification which by virtue of religion must be brought 
about in our world of thought. It is said that our so-called 
modern ethical tendency sets no store by conceptions; but 
from the nature of the case this is not so. No one can get 
along without thought; Avithout a life with consciousness no 
human life is conceivable ; every one goes out from certain 
general conceptions ; and, voluntarily or otherwise, in those 
who live in higher spheres those general conceptions form a 
system, i.e. they stand in a certain relation to each other. 
As an actual fact, therefore, the conflict against "barren 
intellectualism " banishes all influence of revelation or even 
of religion from the development of our world of thought ; 
while eventually the world of thought, which from natural 
reason has become common property, is permitted to assert it- 
self as unassailable and self-evident. With these men it is 
ever the old conflict between the primacy of the consciousness 
and of the will, while our entire higher life is subsumed by 
them under the will. With the deformations of theology, 
however, we need not take this into account; since all such 
efforts end in an entire falsification of the conception of 
theology, and as such belong to our former paragraph. 
The sceptics, on the other hand, whom we here speak of, 
occupy the selfsame view-point with us of special revela- 
tion; with us they feel the need of holding dogma in honor, 
and readily agree that no church can get along without con- 
fessional standards ; only, to all these confessions together 
they attribute nothing but a relative value. The truth is 
not contained in one confession, nor in all the confessions 
taken together; to push propaganda, therefore, of one con- 
fession above another is entirely void of motive. Going 
from one church to another, except for the sake of marriage 
or of national interests, has no significance. And the poor 
martyrs who faced death for the sake of their convictions, 
died like naive victims of a confessional mistake. 

If thus in this confessional scepticism the energy of con- 



Chap. I] § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY 323 

viction is wanting, the confessional absolutists^ oh the other 
hand, sin through the excess of conviction, when they anathe- 
matize eveiything that falls outside of their own confession. 
This ground was not held by the Reformers and the learned 
divines who theologically expounded the confession of the 
Reformers. Even Calvin is clearly conscious that he builds 
on the theology of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas ; and he 
who reads the original Lutheran and Reformed dogmatists, 
perceives at once that they make constant use of what has 
been contributed by Romish theologians. But in the sub- 
sequent period this usage has become extinct. Every church 
withdraws itself within its own walls; and finally it seems 
that there is no theology for the dogmatist, but that which 
rests upon his own confession. Hence, not only in the case of 
every antithesis, is one equally firm in cleaving to his own 
conviction, and in rejecting whatever opposes it; but also 
every suggestion is banished that, at least in that which is 
not antithetic, some theologic depth, development and truth 
may lodge with the opponent. The Romish theologians 
carry this confessional absolutism to the farthest extreme. 
With the Lutheran theologians this absolutism is quickly 
carried into practice, even at the expense of Reformed 
theology. The Reformed theologians alone have longest 
reacted against this confessional absolutism. If the confes- 
sional sceptic knows little besides irenics, and if in his eyes 
all controversy is folly, the absolutist, on the other hand, is 
averse to all irenics, and controversy or polemics is his only 
point of contact with the confessions of the other churches, 
which he considers simply false. 

But it is readily seen that neither this sceptical nor this 
absolutist point of view is in harmony with the claim of 
theology. Not the sceptical^ for if theology is " the knowl- 
edge of God," and if, consequently, theology as a science 
can have no other object than to introduce that revealed 
knowledge of God as clearly as possible into our human 
consciousness, personal conviction must ever be the starting- 
point of all theology. Taken generically, theology is, and 
always will be, knowledge^ and for this reason there can be no 



324 § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

theology where the conviction that one knows is wanting. 
Confessional inclifferentism is in irreconcilable conflict with 
this, for many things may lie in the farthest circumference 
of each one's conviction which are not attached to his 
personal consciousness ; but these do not belong to our con- 
fession. But that which one confesses^ one must mean; of 
this we must be certain ; if necessary, the greatest sacrifice 
must be made for this ; if needs be, the sacrifice of life. That 
now this confessional conviction in the Lutheran Church is 
different from that in the Eastern, and in the Reformed than 
in the Church of Rome, certainly does not depend upon our 
personal preference. This difference is connected, rather, 
with our position in life and genealogy. No objection should 
ever be raised on tliat account, however, against the reality 
of our conviction, since the entire world of our representa- 
tions, those of the non-religious kind also, are determined 
by the circle from which we spring and the age in which 
we live; the Pelagian only may encounter some difficulty 
here, because he does not believe in a divine plan, which 
determines our whole position; but, for the rest, no con- 
viction ever strikes deeper root than when it has been 
prepared atavistically in us. He, therefore, who has in this 
way obtained his conviction as one with his life, does not 
ascribe its possession to his own excellencies, but renders 
thanks for it to the grace of God. A true theologian, there- 
fore, will and must hold for real and true the theology 
which he embraces, and to the further development of which 
he devotes his life, and should not hesitate to consider all 
other theology to be deformation. A Lutheran theologian, 
who is not firmly convinced of the truth of his own confes- 
sion and who has no courage to denounce all theology which 
is opposed to it as deformation, has lost his way. The same 
is true of the Romish theologian. And we as Reformed 
theologians stand equally firm in our unshakable conviction 
that the track, along which we move, runs the most accu- 
rately, and that every other track leads to lesser or greater 
deformation. 

But though from his own point of view no single theolo- 



Chap. 1] § 64. DEFOKMATIONS OF THEOLOGY 325 

gian should shrink from this qualification of deformation, 
this conception of deformation contains, on the other hand, 
an element of appreciation, and therefore a sentence against 
confessional absolutism. Deformation passes judgment on the 
imperfection of the form, but honors the essence. Whether 
this deformation is the outcome of schism, and consequent 
onesidedness, by the contraction of the energy of truth at one 
single point; or whether it has found its origin in heresy, i.e. 
in the adoption into one's confession of elements that are 
foreign to the truth, can make no difference. In either case 
you acknowledge that there is a "knowledge of God," and 
that that which calls itself theology is truly possessed of the 
theologic character. It is still commonly accepted in the con- 
fessions that there is an ectypal knowledge of God, that in 
the natural way this cannot lead the sinner to saving results, 
and that there is a special revelation to supply this want. 
The canonical books also of the Old and New Testaments 
are honored by all these churches together as the Divine 
documentation of this revelation. Difference only begins 
with the addition to these Scriptures of the apocrypha, of 
tradition, of papal inspiration, of the mystic inspiration by 
the internal light (lumen internum), etc. Thus from either 
side we are abundantly able to show how the deformation 
originated with the other; and this is the point of attack; 
yet this does not destroy what is common in all confessions 
and theologies. 

And if this opens the way to the appreciation and use 
of what has been prepared also by theologians of other con- 
fessions, in what is common to us all, it leads at the same 
time to still another consideration. Even Rome does not 
deny that charismata are also at work outside of her church ; 
and where in this way even Rome maintains a unity, our 
Protestant principle includes the open recognition of the 
correlation of the other churches with ours. No single con- 
fessional group claims to be all the church. We rather 
confess that the unity of the bod}^ of Christ extends 
far beyond our confessional boundaries. The theological 
gifts that operate outside of our circle may supply what 



326 § 64. DEFORMATIONS OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

we lack, and self-sufficient narrow-mindedness alone will 
refuse such benefit. With us irenics go ever hand in hand 
with polemics. Firmly and unshakably we stand in our 
confession, that the track along which we move is the most 
accurate known to us, and in virtue of this conviction we 
do not hesitate a moment to mark the divergence of the 
tracks of others as deformation. Against all such deformity 
we direct our polemics. But we are equally conscious of 
the fact that we alone do not constitute the Church of 
Christ in the earth; that there is a conviction of truth 
which operates also outside of our circle; and that in de- 
spite of all such deformation divine gifts continue to foster 
a theologic life worthy of the name. Hence our irenics. 

To us, therefore, there is no theology as such^ which, 
exalting itself above all special theologies, is the theology 
in the absolute sense. Such a theology would effect at once 
a new confession and call into life a new church organi- 
zation; simply because one can hold no different conviction 
as theologian than as church member. But this would 
reverse the order of things. The Church does not spring 
from theology, but theology has its rise in the life of the 
Church. And if the objection is raised, that in this wa}^ 
theology is robbed of its character of universal validity and 
thus becomes unscientific, we answer: (1) that for universal 
validity the acceptance of all individuals is not demanded, 
but only of those who are receptive to the truth of a matter 
and are well informed of it; (2) that every convinced theo- 
logian in the presence of his opponent also appeals from the 
mind that has been ill-informed (male informatum) to the 
mind that is to be better informed (melius informandum). 
The fact that unity of conviction, which is fairly common 
with the material sciences and rare with the spiritual 
sciences, is altogether wanting with the highest, viz. theol- 
ogy, is no plea against theology, since it merely shows that, 
as it touches that which is most tender, it of necessity stands 
highest, and consequently has most to endure from the 
ruin worked by sin in our spiritual life. 

On this ground we maintain the confessional character of 



Chap. I] § 65. EELATION OE THEOLOGY TO ITS OBJECT 327 

theology, since otherwise either the unity of our theological 
thinking is lost, or the integrity of our theological convic- 
tion. To us who are members of the Reformed Churches 
the more exactly defined object of theology is, the knowl- 
edge of God, as given in the Reformed or purified confession. 

§ 65, The Relation of Theology to its Object 

Thus far the course of thought has run smoothly. Knowl- 
edge of God is the crown of all that can be known. Knowledge 
of God is inconceivable, except it is imparted to us by God 
Himself. This knowledge, given us by nature in our crea- 
tion, has been veiled from and darkened in us by the results 
of sin. Consequently it now comes to us in the form of a 
special revelation^ and we have received the divine illumina- 
tion^ by which we can assimilate the content of that revela- 
tion. And science is called in, to introduce this knowledge 
of God, thus revealed, into our human thought. Just here, 
however, a very serious misinterpretation is possible, which 
must needs be prevented. It can be represented that it is 
only science that places the revealed knowledge of God 
within the reach of the pious. In which case it is science 
that investigates the special revelation; the results of this in- 
vestigation are gradually more fully established ; that which 
is established is brought to the knowledge of all ; and thus 
the knowledge of God is made universal. This entirely 
intellectualistic way excludes, meanwhile, the spiritual ex- 
perience of the Church in its entirety, as well as of indi- 
vidual believers. Taken in this way, scientifically theolog- 
ical study must have preceded all faith, and the knowledge of 
God would only have come within our reach after theology 
had as good as finished its task. This, however, is incon- 
ceivable, since theology is born of the Church, and not the 
Church of theology. Reflection does not create life, but 
suo jure life is first, after which reflection speaks its word 
concerning it. And thus spiritual life became manifest 
in the Church of Christ, and as the result of Revelation 
practical spiritual knowledge of God had been the rich pos- 
session of thousands upon thousands, long before the idea of 



328 §65. THE RELATION OF [Div. Ill 

a scientific theology was suggested. It cannot even be said 
that scientific theology presented the forms of thought 
which led to the formulations of dogma. Those formula- 
tions were much more the product of the conflict for truth 
which took place in the life of the Church, and therefore 
they have borne much more an ecclesiastical than a scientific 
character. The knowledge of God, held by the Church, did 
not remain naively mystical, until science analyzed this 
m^'-sticism. But sharp and clear thinking was done in the 
Church as such, long before the science of theology as such 
had won a place for itself. The Church has not lived uncon- 
sciously, but consciously^ and so far as the personal life of 
believers is concerned, no urgency for a closer scientific 
explanation has ever been observed. 

Much less can it be said that scientific theology is called 
to add more certainty to the confession of the Church and to 
demonstrate its truth. The desire to have theology perform 
this service, so entirely foreign to it, has not originated in 
times of spiritual prosperity and healthful activity of faith, 
but was always the bitter fruit of the weakening of faith, and 
consequently was ever incapable of checking the decline of 
the life of the Church. The Church that has leaned on the- 
ology, instead of presenting its arm to theology for its support, 
has always lost the remnant of higher courage which re- 
minded it of better days, and has always degraded itself to a 
dependency upon the school. No, the need of scientific the- 
ology does not spring from the need of the soul, but always 
finds its motive in our human thought. There is a world of 
thought which binds man to man, and which, notwithstanding 
the change of individuals, passes on from generation to gen- 
eration. Only a few, however, live in that world of thought 
with such clear consciousness as to feel themselves at home 
there. But they also who do not enter in so deeply, derive 
general representations from this world of thought which are 
the common property of all and thereby render the mutual 
correspondence among minds possible. And this world of 
thought cannot resist the impulse to take all things up into 
itself, and therefore also this knowledge of God ; and of this 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY TO ITS OBJECT 329 

impulse theology as a science is born. This seems to be other- 
wise, when we observe that the practical purpose of the first 
theological studies was to defend themselves apologetically, or 
to train preachers for the Church ; but appearance must not 
mislead us. The actual need, expressed in these attempts, was 
to seek a point of support for one's propaganda in the world 
of thought that was common to Jews and heathen. It was 
soon learned that with one's preaching pure and simple no 
gains were made. Hence the need was felt of something of 
a more transparent character, to supply which the content 
of the faith was gradually interpreted in the language of our 
thinking consciousness. In proportion as the significance of 
this effort after clearer consciousness was more sharply seen, 
the sense also gradually awakened of a vocation, which, inde- 
pendent of necessity and defence, should cause the content 
of the revealed knowledge of God to shine likewise in this 
world of thought. By obedience to this, that content was 
not brought closer to our heart, but was presented with more 
clearness to our consciousness. The distance was lessened 
between our general conceptions and the content of that reve- 
lation. The confession of that content became more trans- 
parent and accurate, and though this scientific theology was 
unable to add one grain to the content of this knowledge of 
God, it has unquestionably heightened the pleasure of our 
possession. The Church, therefore, has not hesitated to 
profit by it ; and though there is no single pearl in her con- 
fession which she owes theology as such, since all her pearls 
are gathered from the depths of spiritual life, it is equally 
certain that she would not have been able to string these 
pearls so beautifully in her confession, had not the light of 
theology illumined her spiritual labor. From clearer con- 
sciousness to go back to mystic darkness, is obscurantism ; 
and since theology has also made the scientific torch to burn, 
no church that wants to avoid being wilfully " blind " can 
afford to act as though this torch had never been lighted, but 
must duly take it into account. In this wise, moreover, the- 
ological science is no abstraction. On the contrary, it springs 
of necessity from the life of the Church, upon which it exerts 



330 §65. THE RELATION OF [Div. Ill 

an influence in all the stages of its development. What we 
protest against is, that theology should be thought to exist 
merely for the sake of rendering this auxiliary service, and 
that the Church by itself should be considered not to be able 
to do without it. Spiritually the Church has prospered long 
centuries without it, and in so far can never be dependent 
on it. But on the other hand, again, theology should not be 
explained from utility. That it did originate, is accounted 
for by the nobility of our human thought, which cannot rest, 
so long as there is still a single domain within reach which 
it has not annexed to itself. Thinking man, converted to 
God, has felt himself called to cause the honor of God's truth 
to shine also in the world of our representations and concep- 
tions. If that which God causes us to perceive of Himself 
were limited to a mystic esthesia, we might philosophize 
about this phenomenon, but we would never be able to ana- 
lyze this perception theologically. Since, however, at sun- 
dry times and in divers manners God has spoken unto the 
fathers, and thus light upon God has arisen in our conscious- 
ness, that revelation itself has impelled a scientific investi- 
gation, and Christendom would have done violence to the 
impulse of its consciousness if it had lived without theology. 
Theology, therefore, like every other science, aims at as 
complete and accurate a knowledge of its object as possible. 
It too is born from the thirst after insight and clearness, 
and cannot rest so long as there is still a possibility of mak- 
ing the insight into its object more clear. Theology should 
not be denied this ideal character of all science, and there- 
fore its motive should ever be sought in knowing God, and 
not in knowing religion or Christianity. Religion and Chris- 
tendom by themselves are excellent and important subjects, 
but as such they do not cover a necessary department in 
our consciousness. But this is entirely different with respect 
to the Eternal Being. In every human consciousness of 
higher development, or at least in the general consciousness 
of humanity, there is a vacant space, which can only be filled 
by the knowledge of the Eternal One. If, therefore, as was 
shown above, theology is to find its object only in the re- 



Chap. I] THEOLOGY TO ITS OBJECT 331 

vealed, ectypal knowledge of Grod^ this should never be taken 
in the sense of scholastic learning. The motive for all the- 
ology is and ever will be the knowledge of the Eternal 
Being, not now in the interest of the needs of our heart, and 
not, as a rule, for the practical purposes of life, but solely 
in the interest of the world of our thought. More than 
this it cannot give. As a science, it is and always will be 
intellectual work, and can never be anything else. Only as 
far as the revealed knowledge of God has a logical con- 
tent, is theology able to master it. Outside of the domain 
of our thinking it is powerless ; but when the matter con- 
cerns this thinking, it is indisputably the province of theol- 
ogy to do it. 

But if in this way we concentrate its calling upon the criti- 
cal examination of the self -revelation of the Eternal Being 
to us sinners, we do not mean that it is merely to explain from 
this revelation what relates exclusively to God and to His 
Nature. It must be strictly theological, so that from the be- 
ginning to the end of its epic God Himself is the hero ; but as 
was observed by the older theologians, one can treat of God 
both in the direct and oblique cases (de Deo in casu recto et 
obliquo) . Not only, therefore, that which in revelation deals 
with the being of God, but also His attributes, activities, 
and creations, so far as these contribute to the knowledge 
of God, should be taken up in the investigation ; nature, 
therefore, as well, and history, i.e. from the theological side ; 
and man likewise, provided he is taken as created after the 
image of God, and thus interpreted theologically. And as 
knowledge of a powerful thinker is deemed incomplete 
for his biography, unless you include his ideas concerning 
the significance of man, the great problems of life, and the 
development which awaits us in the future, it is self-evident, 
that it belongs to the knowledge of God, to investigate what 
He declares concerning man. His relation to the children of 
men, and His counsel which shall stand. The emphasis, 
which we put upon theology, as theology, tends by no means 
to impoverish it ; we take it that its content is thereby greatly 
enriched ; we only claim that whatever shall belong to its 



332 § 65. RELATION OF THEOLOGY TO ITS OBJECT [Div. Ill 

content must be governed by one and the same leading 
thought, which leading thought is the knowledge of God. 
This provides at the same time a standard, as shall be shown 
later on, by which to bring perspective into the Scripture ; 
provided we avoid the errors of distinguishing betw^een 
Scripture and the Word of God, and of concentrating the 
significance of the Scripture upon the religious-ethical. The 
knowledge of God alone teaches you to distinguish between 
eminent, common, and less important interests in the Script- 
ure. Only that which you have made your own theologi- 
cally^ you possess as part of revelation ; while that which 
to your sense is not connected with the knowledge of the 
Eternal Being, lies still outside of it. 

Even this, however, does not entirely determine the rela- 
tion of theology to its object. All this concerns exclusively 
the content of Revelation, and does not yet reckon with the 
revealed knowledge of God as such. Thus far a dogmatic- 
ethical study might develop itself, but this would not provide 
room for a theology in the broader unfolding of all its depart- 
ments of study. Only with the organic construction of 
theology as a scientific unity can it be shown more accu- 
rately of every department, in what relation it stands to the 
knowledge of God, and what place, therefore, belongs to 
such a department in the theologic unit. To this, then, we 
refer ; but it is necessary here to indicate, in broad outline, 
from whence theology derives these many departments of 
study. It will not suffice to say, that they have appeared 
de facto ^ neither will it be enough to emphasize the signifi- 
cance of these departments as preparation for the preaching of 
the Word. To be capable of being scientifically interpreted, 
the unit of a science must spring from the root of its object, 
or, at least, its object must be its motive. This object here 
is : the revealed knowledge of God^ or the theologia ectypa reve- 
lata. From this it follows, that we are not simply to deal 
with the content of this revelation, but also that this revela- 
tion as such must be investigated ; that the activity must 
be traced, which has gone out from this revelation ; and that 
the relation must be traced between revelation and our 



Chap. 1] § 66. SACRED THEOLOGY 333 

psychic data, in order to make action from our side possible 
with that revelation. He who is to make a scientific ex- 
amination of a mineral spring, is not permitted to rest con- 
tent with an analysis of its ferruginous quality, but is bound 
to inquire into the history of this spring, to watch the action 
of its waters, and to experiment as to how its content is best 
applied. Apply this to the revealed knowledge of God, and 
you perceive at once, that the theological science cannot deem 
its task completed, when it has analyzed the content of reve- 
lation, but the revelation itself and the action that went out 
from it, together with the method demanded by its applica- 
tion, must be studied in their relation to each other. With 
the strictest maintenance, therefore, of the theologic character 
of our science, nothing prevents a view of the relations 
of the several departments of study. For instance, what is 
church history but the broad narrative of the effects which 
the ectypal knowledge of God has exerted in the life of 
nations? Meanwhile we content ourselves with the simple 
indication of it here. This relation can only fully be 
explained in the closing sections of this volume. 

^ ^Q. Sacred Theology 

Before we enter upon the study of the principium of 
Theology, we insert here a brief explanation of the ancient 
epithet of Sacred before Theology, Not that we should insist 
on this title, or that to our idea this title implies any special 
merit, but because the purpose of its omission is the secular- 
ization of theology, and for this reason it has an essential 
significance as an effort to destroy the distinguishing char- 
acter of theology. The habit of speaking of Sacred The- 
ology has the indorsement of the ages. At the Reformation 
the churches found it in this form, and they felt themselves 
bound to reverence and maintain it. The first mention of 
the omission of this title appears, after the conflict had 
begun against a principium proprium for theology ; and 
the dislike which the effort to restore this ancient title to 
theology creates in many people, is identical with the dis- 
like which is shown by those same people for every 



334 § 66. SACRED THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

representation of a special revelation. As the omission of 
Sancta was no accident, our effort is equally intentional, to 
renew the use of that name in our Reformed circles. By in- 
serting 8ancta before Theologia we desire it to be clearly 
understood, that we take no part in the secularization of 
Theology, but maintain that it has a sphere of its own. 

The Church of Christ has borrowed from the Holy Script- 
ures this Avord sacred as a prefix to whatever stands in imme- 
diate relation to the special revelation. This prefix is con- 
stantly used in the Old, as well as in the New, Testament. 
The spot of ground at the burning bush is called holy ground, 
because there the holiness of the Lord revealed itself to 
Moses. The 7np in Israel, or the congregation of the people, 
is called holy. In Exod. xvi. 23 it speaks of 'Hhe holy 
sabbath unto the Lord." The people itself is called an 
"holy people," and its members are called "holy men" 
(Exod. xxii. 31). In a still more pregnant sense the altar 
is called " holy " and " whatsoever touches the altar " (Exod. 
xxix. 37), which refers to places and buildings, as well as to 
persons, their garments, tools and acts. Jerusalem itself is 
called the "holy city" (Neh. xi. 1). Holy, therefore, is the 
definite epithet not only for what is in heaven, with all the 
hosts of angels, but equally for that which on earth is chosen 
of God for His service. Thus the Psalmist speaks of "the 
saints that are in the earth." " God's faithfulness is in the 
assembly of the holy ones." Thus the Proverbs speak of 
the knowledge the people of God received by higher light, as 
"the knowledge of the holy" (A. Y. ix. 10 and xxx. 3); and, 
in short, without a closer study of the idea of t?n|P, it may 
be said that in the Old Testament this title of "holy" is 
attached to everything that transmits the special revelation, 
flows forth from it, or stands in immediate relation to it. 

That it will not do to explain this prefix, " holy," simply 
from the symbolic and typical character of the Old Dispen- 
sation, appears from the entirely similar use of " holy " in 
the writings of the New Covenant. Here also we find 
Jerusalem spoken of as the "holy city" (Math. iv. 5; xxvii. 
63 and Rev. xi. 2 ; xxi. 2 and xxii. 19). Christ also 



Chap. I] § 66. SACRED THEOLOGY 335 

speaks of 'nhe holy angels" (Luke ix. 26). Christ himself 
is called "that hoi?/ one that shall be born of Mary." The 
men of God of the Old Covenant are spoken of as the " holi/ 
prophets." The members of the Church of the New Cove- 
nant, from the Jews as well as from the heathen, bear 
the almost fixed name of " the saints," so that ol aytoi, 
was provisionally the technical name for those who subse- 
quently were called "the Christians." In an entirely similar 
sense the books of the Old Covenant are spoken of as the 
" Holy Scriptures." The kiss, with which the partakers of the 
ayaTrat greeted each other, receives the name of "holy kiss." 
Children born of believing parents receive the same hono- 
rary title. Like the prophets of the Old Covenant, the apostles 
and prophets of the New Dispensation are called " AoZy apostles 
and prophets." Believers on the Lord are called a "holy 
people," a "holy priesthood." Their prayers come up before 
God as " the prayers of the saints " ; the martyr's blood is 
" the blood of the saints " ; and the Gospel itself is announced 
as "the holi/ Gospel." 

In connection with this use of language the Church of 
Christ has introduced this epithet of " holy " into her public 
utterances ; and not only the Romish Church, but the churches 
of the Reformation as well, spoke of the "holy church," of 
the "holy prophets," the "holy apostles," the "holy Script- 
ures," the "holy Gospel," the "holy sacraments," "holy 
Baptism," " holy Communion," and thus likewise of " sacred 
Theology " and the " sacred ministry." This use of language 
was constant, and, at least in this limited sense, met with no 
opposition. This only manifested itself when the Romish 
church applied this epithet of "holy" distinctively to indi- 
vidual persons of a higher religious standing. This opposi- 
tion, however, was not unanimous nor logical. Even where 
the so-called Romish saints were passed by, it remained 
invariably the custom to speak of " Saint Augustine," " Saint 
Thomas," etc. These were inconsequences, however, to which 
men were led by the accustomed sound, and which represented 
in the case of no writer in the days of the Reformation any 
intentional principle ; in addition to which it is observed 



336 §66. SACRED THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

that Reformed theologians offended less in this respect than 
many a Lutheran. 

This does not mean that by this reformatory correction the 
use of the ancient Christian church was restored in all its 
purity. Originally, indeed, the name of holy (a7to?) was a 
general distinction, to discriminate between what was within 
and what without. Everything that had entered holy ground 
was considered holy ; everything outside was spoken of as 
"lying in wickedness"; but in the Scriptures of the New 
Testament no such distinction occurs between a lower and 
higher holiness within the bounds of the Church. The error 
of the Romish Church lies in the application of this title to this 
non-Scriptural distinction. While in the Holy Scriptures all 
confessors of Christ are called saints, the Romish Church 
deprived the people at large of this title, and reserved it for 
a special class of Christians, either for the clergy in general, 
or for those under higher vows, or for those who, as church 
fathers and teachers, held a special position ; or finally, 
in its narrowest sense, for those who were canonized. The 
Reformation opposed this non-Scriptural distinction, but 
lacked courage to restore the name of saint in its original 
significance to all believers. Spiritualistic apocalyptic circles 
tended toward this ; from the side of Protestantism also, 
in addresses, etc., the whole congregation were again called 
"a holy communion" (eine heilige Gemeinde); poets fre- 
quently followed this use of language ; but the Reforma- 
tion has not restored the name of saint as a general term for 
every Christian. It preferred rather to abandon the name 
in its general sense, than by the use of it to encourage the 
Romish misuse. 

From this, however, it is evident that there was no super- 
ficial work done in the days of the Reformation, and that the 
representation that by speaking of "holy Scripture," "holy 
Gospel," "holy Baptism," etc., they merely imitated Rome, 
rests on a misunderstanding. The reformers did most care- 
ful work. There were cases in which the epithet "holy" 
was purposely dropped ; but others also in which this prefix 
was purposely kept ; and to this last category belongs the 



Chap. I] § 66. SACRED THEOLOGY 337 

word ''Sacred'' before Theology. If it is asked what was 
meant by this qualification of theology, no special reason 
seems to have been given. As in the Proverbs " the knowl- 
edge of the holy " was spoken of, it was thought proper that 
that knowledge and science, whose principium lies in the 
Holy Scriptures, should be distinguished from all other 
knowledge ; and thus it may be said, that in the sixteenth 
century Sancta theologia chiefly indicated the antithesis be- 
tween that which came to us from profane literature and 
from the Holy Scriptures. 

At present, however, this general indication will not suf- 
fice. The significance of this epithet for the object, the 
subject, and the method of theology should be more accu- 
rately analyzed. And with reference to the object^ the prin- 
cipium proprium of theology stands certainly in the fore- 
ground. What we understand by this " proper principle " 
of theology, we will endeavor to explain in the following 
chapter ; here it is merely remarked that the ectypal knowl- 
edge of God, in which the science of theology finds its 
object, does not come to us in the same way, from the same 
fountain and by the same light, as our other sciences. There 
is a difference here, which in its deepest root reduces itself 
to a straightforward antithesis, which places two principles 
of knowing (principia cognoscendi) over against each other. 
The particular principium of theology characterizes itself by 
the entrance of an immediate, divine action, which breaks 
through what is sinful and false, in order in the midst of 
these false and sinful conditions to reveal unto us, by a light 
of its own, what is true and holy in antithesis to what is sin- 
ful and false. The heathen antithesis between profane and 
sacred has no application here. That was simply the pride 
of the initiated that expressed itself at the expense of the 
uninitiated. The odi profanum vidgus et arceo is refuted 
and censured by the character of everything that is holy in 
the Scriptures, and we might wish that our theologians 
would never have employed the word profane as an antithe- 
sis. In Scripture the antithesis is between the special source 
and the natural^ which is more sharply emphasized by the 



338 § Q6. SACRED THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

antithesis between what is wicked^ foolish and satanic^ and 
what is trne, holy and divine. But however much this 
proper principium of theology, far from underestimating the 
natural principium, rather takes it up in itself, as the next 
chapter will show, the antithesis between the normal and 
abnormal, the general and special, and between that which 
is bound by sin and that which surmounts sin, of these " two 
sources of knowledge," can never be destroyed. To empha- 
size this antithesis, the word " sacred " was used in simple 
imitation of the Scripture, and in this entirely Scriptural 
sense our science was called Sacred Theology, 

If thus the principal motive for the use of this word 
" sacred " lies in the peculiar character of the object of the 
science of theology, a second motive was added in conse- 
quence of the peculiar quality which in the investigation 
of this object was claimed as a necessity in the subject. This 
was on the ground of 1 Cor. ii. 14, that " the natural man 
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are 
foolishness unto him " ; and also because he who stands out- 
side of palingenesis "cannot see the kingdom of God." 
Hence, there was not simply an antithesis to be considered 
between the object of this and of all other sciences ; but a 
similar antithesis also presented itself in the subject^ that was 
to take this theology up into itself and presently to repro- 
duce it. Not every one can engage in this work, but only 
they who are spiritually minded. No intellectual relation is 
possible in the domain of this science, between those to whom 
this theology is " foolishness," and the others to whom it is 
the "wisdom of God." They only, who by virtue of palin- 
genesis are partakers of spiritual illumination^ have their eyes 
opened to see the object to be investigated. The others do 
not see it, or see it wrongly. By reason of the lack of affin- 
ity between subject and object, every deeper penetration into 
the object is impossible. The rule that " in thy light we see 
light " finds here its special application. No blind man can 
be our guide in the domain of optics. Though it is entirely 
true, therefore, that in the science of Theology the ego of the 
general human consciousness is the general subject, yet this 



Chap. I] % 66. SACRED THEOLOGY - 339 

ego is here incapable of its task, unless the darkening worked 
by sin in his consciousness is gradually withdrawn. 

This leads, in the third place, to the conviction that the 
science of theology is not governed by the general human 
mind, such as it now operates in our fallen race, but only to 
that extent in which this universal human mind has been 
animated by the ITolt/ Crhost, i.e. also to a difference in 
metliod. Only later on can this point be fully explained. 
At present let it be said that that same Holy Spirit, who 
offers us the Holy Scriptures and the Church as the result of 
His activity, is the real Doctor ecclesicB, who enables us to 
grasp the truth from the Scriptures, and from our conscious- 
ness to reflect the same in scientific analysis. As it advances 
in the course of centuries, there is coherence and steadiness 
of progress in the science of theology, and a decided unity 
of effort, even though individual theologians are not con- 
scious of it or able to determine its course. But while this 
unity of effort in the course of centuries is determined in the 
other sciences partly by the inherent Logic, and by natural 
events keeping pace with it, theology derives this determi- 
nation of its process from a Logic which presents itself in 
light pneumatically only, in connection with events which 
flow from the dealings of Christ with his Church. Hence, 
this leading of the Holy Spirit as subject of theology makes 
itself felt in a threefold way. First, through the Church, 
which has the formulation of dogma in hand, and with it the 
choice of the course to be taken, and which effects this formu- 
lation of dogma officially, i.e. as the instrument of the Holy 
Spirit. That in this the Church is not an infallible organ, 
and the reason for it, will be explained later on. We here 
content ourselves with pointing to this mingling of ecclesi- 
astical power in the development of theology, as one of the 
actions of the Holy Ghost. Secondly, this action of the Holy 
Spirit presents itself in the logical development of those ten- 
dencies opposed to the truth, which, without any fault or 
purpose of its own, the Church has had to resist successively, 
and which only subsequently prove themselves to have been 
the means of revealing truth in its logical relation. Not 



310 § 66. SACRED THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

from the Church, but rather from without comes the frequent 
impetus, which stimulates aud necessitates spiritual thought, 
and yet the thinking born from this is not aphoristic, but 
logical and organically coherent. And in the third place 
this action of the Holy Spirit is evident from the pro- 
ductiveness of theology in times when the operations of the 
Spirit in the Church are powerful, and from the poverty 
and meagreness which are seen in contrast, as soon as those 
operations of the Spirit withdraw themselves from the 
Church. Subjectively this can be expressed by saying that 
theology has flourished only at the times when theologians 
have continued in prayer, and in prayer have sought the 
communion of the Holy Spirit, and that on the other hand 
it loses its leaf and begins its winter sleep when ambition 
for learning silences prayer in the breast of theologians. 

In this sense, both with reference to its object^ and to the 
extent in which it concerns its subject^ and its method as 
well (in virtue of the leading of the Holy Spirit as Doctor 
ecclesiae^, the peculiar character of theology demands that 
its peculiarity shall be characterized also by its title of Sacred 
Theologj^ 



CHAPTER II 

THE FUNDAMENTAL, REGULATIVE, AND DISTINCTIVE PRIN- 
CIPLE OF THEOLOGY, OR PRINCIPIUM THEOLOGIAE 

§ 67. What is here to he understood by Principium 

When theology abandoned its proper and original char- 
acter, it also ceased to speak of a principium of its own ; 
and gradually we have become so estranged from the earlier 
theological life, that it is scarcely any longer understood 
what our old theologians meant by the principium theolo- 
giae. This principium of theology is not infrequently taken 
as synonymous wdth fons theologiae^ i.e. with the fountain 
from which the science of theology draws its knowledge. 
Why is this wrong ? When I speak of the fountains of a 
science, I understand thereby a certain group out of the 
sum of phenomena, from which a separate whole of science 
is distilled by me. For the Zoologist these fountains lie in 
the animal world, for the Botanist in the world of plants, 
for the Historian in many-sided tradition, etc. But how- 
ever much in each of these domains of science the fountains 
may differ, the principium of knowing (cognoscendi), from 
which knowledge comes to us with these several groups of 
phenomena, is ever one and the same. It is, in a word, the 
natural man who hy his reason draws this knowledge from his 
object, and that object is subjected to him as the thinking 
subject. If now I proceed in like manner on theological 
ground, formaliter at least, then my principium of knowing 
remains here entirely the same that it is for the botanist or 
zoologist, and the difference consists onl}^ in the difference 
of the object. AVhether I seek that object in God Himself, 
or in the Christian religion, or in religious phenomena makes 
no fundamental difference. With all these it is still the 
thinking man who subjects these objects to himself, and by 

841 



342 § 67. WHAT IS HERE TO BE UNDERSTOOD [Dir. Ill 

virtue of his general principium of knowing draws knowl- 
edge from them. For, and I speak reverently, even when 
I posit God Himself as the object of theology, this God is 
then placed on trial by the theologian, and it is the theologian 
who does not cast himself down in worship before Him, 
saying, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," but of his 
own right (suo jure) investigates Him. The result, indeed, 
has shown that he who has taken this attitude, has either 
entirely revolutionarily reversed the order of things and 
placed himself as critic above his God, or has falsified the 
object of theology and substituted for it religious phe- 
nomena ; a method which seemed more innocent, but which 
actually led to a like result, since from this standpoint 
" knowledge of God " remained wanting, and want of knowl- 
edge of God is little else than intellectual atheism. 

The propounding of a special principium in the theologi- 
cal sphere (even though we grant that this was not always 
done correctly), viewed in itself, was little else than the 
necessary result of the peculiar character of theology. If 
the object of theology had stood coordinate with the objects 
of the other sciences, then together with those sciences 
theology would have been obliged to employ a common 
principium of knowing. Since, on the other hand, the object 
of theology excluded every idea of coordination, and think- 
ing man, who asked after the knowledge of God, stood in a 
radically different relation to that God than to the several 
kingdoms of created things, there had to be a difference in 
the principium of knowing. With every other object it was 
the thinking subject that took knowledge ; here it was the 
object itself that gave knowledge. And this antithesis is 
least of all set aside by the remark, that the flower also pro- 
vides the botanist with knowledge concerning itself. This 
replaces a real manner of speech by a metaphorical one. 
The flower indeed does nothing, and the whole plant, on 
which the flower blooms, is passive. Even though it is 
maintained that the flower exhibits color and form, this is 
by no means yet the knowledge of the flower, but merely 
so many data, from which this knowledge is gathered by the 



Chap. II] BY PEINCIPnTM 343 

botanist. Hence our speaking, with reference to theology, 
of a special principium of knowing of its own, is the result 
of the entirely peculiar position, in which here the knowing 
subject stands over against God as the object to be known. 
Theology, taken in its original and only real meaning, as 
" knowledge of God," or as " the science of the knowledge of 
God," cannot go to work like the other sciences, but must 
take a way of its own; which not merely in its bends and 
turns, but in its entire extent, is to be distinguished from 
the ordinary way of obtaining knowledge (via cognitionis), 
and therefore assumes a principium of knowing of its own 
as its point of departure. 

Even if the fact of sin were left out of account, and the 
special revelation were not considered, formaliter a princi- 
pium of its own must still be claimed for theology. This 
claim may be more sharply accentuated by these two facts, 
but it may never be represented as though the necessity of 
a source of its own were only born formaliter from sin. 
This necessity does not merely lie in the abnormal, but in 
the normal as well, and must ever find its ground in this 
fact, that God is God, and that consequently the Eternal 
Being cannot become the object of creaturely knowledge, 
as coordinate with the creature. Let it be supposed that 
the development of our race had taken place without sin ; 
man would nevertheless have known the things that may 
be known of God, from the world of his heart and the world 
round about him, but not as the fruit of empiricism and the 
conclusions based thereon. From the finite no conclusion 
can be drawn to the infinite, neither can a Divine reality 
be known from external or internal phenomena, unless that 
real God reveals Himself in my consciousness to my ego ; 
reveals Himself as G-od ; and thereby moves and impels me 
to see in these finite phenomena a brightness of His glory. 
Formaliter, neither observation nor reasoning would ever 
have rendered service here as the principium of knowing. 
Without sin, this self-revelation of the Divine Ego to my 
personal ego would never have been, even in part, the fruit 
of Theophany, or of incarnation, but would have taken 



344 §67. WHAT IS HERE TO BE UNDERSTOOD [Div. HI 

place normally in my personal being, and in such a way 
that even then the way by which knowledge is obtained 
would have divided itself into two, one leading to the 
knowledge of those objects which, being passive^ I subject 
to myself, the other leading to the knowledge of that one 
Object, to which I myself am passively subjected. That 
'^ faith " assumes its peculiar office here, and that, as belong- 
ing to our human nature, it may turn into unfaith, but can 
never fall away, has been remarked before. In this place 
it is enough to note the distinction, that formaliter the 
thinking subject can obtain his knowledge from a twofold 
principium : either from himself, by going to work actively^ 
or, if he must remain passive, not from himself but from a 
principium, the impulse of which proceeds from the object, 
in casu from God, and only thus operates in him. 

From this it already appears that the proposition of the 
old theology, — Principium theologiae est Sacra Scriptura, 
i.e. the Sacred Scripture is the Principium of Theology, — 
has nothing in common with the representation of a few 
remaining supranaturalists, who still grant that the Script- 
ure spreads light upon much that otherwise would be dark 
to us. The very word principium indeed, which may never 
be mistaken for fons or phenomenon, claims, that b}^ 
nature this principium stands in organic connection with 
the real nature of theology. But, as was observed above, 
the peculiar character of theology, and therefore also the 
special nature of its principium, is accentuated still more 
by sin. Under its power it continued not merely a fact 
that the thinking subject stood passively over against God 
as object; but in addition to this, the normal means, for 
receiving in the passive sense this knowledge of God, could 
no longer operate accurately, and therefore failed of the 
desired effect. By nature man could not take knowledge 
of God actively, and as sinner he could no longer let him- 
self even passively be given this knowledge of God by God. 
This modification in man and in his relation to God could 
issue only in one or the other result, viz. that either the sinner 
should live on without "knoAvledge of God," or that from 



Chap. II] BY PRINCIPIUM 345 

the side of God there should proceed an activity to impart 
this knowledge to sinful man, in keeping with his need as 
sinner. The latter then, however, took place outside of 
the life that sprang of itself from the creation principium 
and the knowledge connected with it ; it was a special prin- 
ciple (proprium quid), which only stepped in between pro- 
visionally, and was destined to disappear again, as soon as 
the normal development of our race had reached its final end. 
In this way this self-revelation of God to the sinner was 
also materialiter an action from a special principium in 
God ; from this principium in God this action went out to 
the world and to the sinner ; and as soon as man thus 
operated upon began to give an account to himself of the 
common phenomena of, and of this abnormal process in, his 
life, from the nature of the case the principium of all the 
rest would lie in creation, while the principium of this 
entirely special action is found in a re-creative act of God. 
It made no difference that, along with this action, existing 
elements from creation were employed. Such elements were 
then assimilated by the active principium and rendered ser- 
viceable to it, just like the chisel in the hands of the sculptor, 
or as a board sawn from a tree, which serves for the hull 
of a ship. If in theology, therefore, as such formaliter^ 
there lay the claim that it springs out of a principium of 
knowing of its own, this principium of Theology is distin- 
guished, by and in consequence of sin, from the principium 
of knowing in the domain of the other sciences materialiter 
also, and hence concerns both the formal and the material 
principium. 

In part it may even be maintained, that the princi2)ium 
of being (essendi) is also included here. That self -revela- 
tion of God to the sinner is possible even without a pre- 
ceding regeneration, is shown in the case of Balaam ; but 
this exception does not make the rule ; the general rule is, 
that regeneration precedes spiritual illumination. The " en- 
lightened " of Heb. vi. 4 do not stand in the same line with 
the "enlightened" of Eph. i. 18. The latter only are "spirit- 
ual" and "have received the things of the Spirit of God." This 



346 §67. WHAT IS HERE TO BE UNDERSTOOD [Div. Ill 

regeneration is not an element in knowing (cognoscere), but 
in being (esse), and if account is taken of the fact that the 
whole revelation of God, though directed by the Logos, 
nevertheless proceeds through an entire series of events and 
wonders, and finally culminates in the essential incarnation 
and all it carries with it, then it is evident that the dis- 
tinction between theology and the other sciences not only 
formally touches the principium of faith, and materially the 
" good word of God " (^koXov Oeov prj/jbo), but also penetrates 
into our real being (esse). This exjDlains the fact that the 
Theosophists, and in part the Mystics in the tracks of the 
former, have sought to obtain the knowledge of God alon^ 
this way of being (via essendi). And this difference in the 
real being (esse) must indeed be taken into account, at 
least so far as it concerns its modality. He who neglects 
to do this, annuls regeneration, and thereby undermines all 
faith in miracles. Meanwhile it must not be lost from sight 
that the distinction in the essential forms no fundamental 
antithesis. Sin is no essence (esse), but a modality of it 
(to esse) ; and consequently regeneration, which annuls and 
conquers sin, can create no other essence, but can merely 
reestablish from its perverted modality the original real 
being (esse) into its ideal modality. He who deems that 
this touches the essentia itself, and not its modus simply, 
becomes a Manichsean. And if it be said that we must 
take account of "the powers of the world to come," etc., 
we answer, that from the beginning there has been an 
organic connection between the creature in his present and 
eternal condition. Even with the most radical metamor- 
phosis there could never be a change of the essence. If, 
then, it is beyond doubt, that, on account of regeneration 
and miracles, real being (esse) must also be considered, no 
tAvo principles of being stand over against each other ; in 
the realm of nature, as well as in the realm of grace, it is 
and remains the original principium of being, even though 
this principium operates in the two in different ways. Very 
properly, therefore, Theosophi/ has been dismissed, and the 
full emphasis has been put on Theology as such. 



Chap. II] BY FRINCIPIUM 347 

This has made it customary to seek the proper priiicipium 
of theology immediately in the Holy Scripture, by which 
was meant of course simply the material principium of 
knowing (principium cognoscendi materiale). The knowl- 
edge of God, which God Himself had communicated by 
numerous facts and revelations, and which under his guid- 
ance was embodied in the Holy Scripture, was the gold which 
theology was to delve from the mine of the Holy Scripture. 
Meanwhile this could not be intended otherwise than as an 
abbreviated manner of speech. A principium is a living 
agent, hence a principium of knowledge must be an agent 
from which of necessity knowledge flows. And this of course 
the Bible as such is not. The principium of knowledge 
existed before knowledge had emerged from this princi- 
pium, and consequently before the first page of Scripture 
was written. When, nevertheless, the Sacred Scripture is 
called the sole principium of theology (principium unicum 
theologiae), then the Scripture here is taken as a plant, 
whose germ has sprouted and budded, and has unfolded 
those buds. It is not, therefore, the naked principium, but 
the principium together with what it has brought forth. 
Speaking more accurately, we should say that the material 
principium is the self -rev elation of God to the sinner, from 
which principium the data have come forth in the Holy 
Scriptures, from which theology must be built up. Since, 
however, theology can only begin when Revelation is com- 
pleted, we may readily proceed from the ultimate cause (prin- 
cipium remotum) to the proximate (proximum), and say that 
theology sprang from the completed revelation, i.e. from the 
Scriptures, as the proximate cause, while that revelation 
itself originated from the ultimate cause of the self -revela- 
tion of God. 

It is unfortunate, however, that in olden time so little 
attention was paid to the formal principium. For now it 
seemed altogether as though the still darkened understand- 
ing was to investigate the Scripture as its object, in an 
entirely similar way to that in which this same under- 
standing threw itself on plant and animal as its object ► 



348 § 66. REPRESENTATIONS CONCERNING [Div. Ill 

At first this compelled the understandmg to adapt and 
accommodate itself to the authority of the Holy Scripture, 
which then still maintained a high position. But, in the 
long run, roles were to be exchanged, and the neglect of 
the formal principium was to bring about a revision of 
the Scripture in the sense of our darkened understanding, 
as has now actually taken place. For if faith was consid- 
ered under Soteriology, and in connection with faith the 
*' illumination," what help was this, as long as theology itself 
was abandoned to the rational subject, in which rational 
subject, from the hour of his creation, no proper and 
separate principium of knowing God had been allowed to 
assert itself? 

§ 68. Different Representations concerning the Operation of 

this Principium 

In the first section of this chapter, it has been shown 
that the possession of a special principium of knowing is 
indispensable to theology, for the reason that God is never 
a passive phenomenon, so that all knowledge of God must 
ever be the fruit of self -revelation on His side. Hence it 
is the distinct nature of the object of theology which ren- 
ders a special principium of knowing necessary. This is 
essentially agreed upon, without distinction, b}^ all who still 
hold fast to theology in its original sense. Not by those who, 
though they have adopted an entirely different object for their 
science, still call themselves theologians ; but by the theo- 
logians of all churches and tendencies, who, in whatever 
else they may differ from each other, are still agreed in this, 
that theology is bent upon the knowledge of the living God, 
and that from God Himself alone this knowledge can come to 
us. Among all these, there is no difference of view concern- 
ing this ultimate cause (principium remotum). 

It is different, on the other hand, when it is further 
investigated in what way this principium of God's self- 
revelation has operated or still operates. The confession 
is still almost universal that this self-revelation lies at 
our disposal in the Holy Scripture ; but while one group 



Chaf. 11] THE OPERATION OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 349 

affirms : In the Holy Scripture and notJdng else, another 
group asserts that the apocryphal books as well, and tradi- 
tion, yea, the papal inspiration also, claim our attention ; 
those who are mystically inclined tend to supersede the 
Scriptures by personal inspiration ; and minds that wan- 
der off yet farther point you to a Word of God in nature, 
in history, in the conscience, or in the ideal disposition of 
your heart. Two things must be carefully distinguished. 
There is, on the one hand, the question whether by sin the 
self-revelation of God is compelled to take a temporary 
side-road, in order, when sin shall have been entirely over- 
come, to resume again its original way, or whether in the 
sinner, also, the internal address of God is still heard in 
sufficiently clear accents. This touches the relation of nat- 
ural theology to specially revealed theology, and can pass 
into the question whether natural theology is not sufficient 
for the sinner ; a matter which in turn is connected with 
the doctrine of sin. If the reality of sin is finally denied, 
by dissolving its antithetic character and by viewing it as 
a stage in a continuous process of development, then it is 
evident that there is no longer any question of the darken- 
ing of our knowledge of God by sin. This, however, is not 
the point that is in order in this section. Here we assume, 
therefore, that the reality of sin is acknowledged, that the 
darkening of our knowledge of God by sin is confessed, 
so that without a special revelation no sufficient knowledge 
of God for the sinner is deemed obtainable. If this is 
accepted, then we come to face an entirely different question : 
viz. how this special revelation is to be conceived. 

The most general conception under which these represen- 
tations can be grasped is that of inspiration, i.e. of an inwork- 
ing of the Spirit of God upon the mind and heart of the 
sinner, by which God makes Himself known to him, and com- 
municates His will or His thoughts. For the present we pass 
by the quantitive element in this inspiration ; we take it now 
only qualitatively; in which case it is clear that fundamentally 
it is one and the same conception, whether I speak of theop- 
neusty in the prophets and apostles, of an internal light in 



350 §68. REPRESENTATIONS CONCERNING [Div. Ill 

the mysticism of the emotions, or of a papal infallibility. 
The prophet, the mystic, and the bishop of Rome are all 
sinners, and of each of these three it is affirmed, not that they 
conceive or imagine something concerning God of themselves, 
but that there has gone out or goes out upon them an opera- 
tion of the Holy Spirit, which eo ipso^ as wrought by God, 
bears the divine mark of genuineness. In the application only 
do these inspiration, internal light and infallibility differ. 
The most general conception of this inspiration is that of the 
mysticus. He is the individualist ; takes, therefore, every 
sinner by himself ; and now thinks that God, being desirous to 
reveal Himself to sinners, could scarcely do this in any other 
way than by communicating Himself separately to every 
sinner, and thus make Himself known by each. This repre- 
sentation is both the most primitive and simple. Entirely 
aphoristically God makes Himself known first to A and then 
to B. That they should know of each other is not necessary. 
Every one spirituall}^ sick sits as it were in a cell of his own, 
and in this separated cell receives the visit of the heavenly 
Physician. Thus it goes on from year to year, and from age 
to age. This inspiration repeats itself in land upon land. 
In the main it is always the same, and can only vary accord- 
ing to age, sex, nationality, needs of the soul, etc. With all 
these variations the type of this inspiration remains unchange- 
able. It is ever God Almighty turning Himself to the indi- 
vidual sinner, and making Himself known in His eternal 
mercies. The truth of this mysticism lies naturally in the 
high estimate of the personal element in religion, and in 
preaching that not only every individual person must come 
to his God, but also, that Grod must reveal Himself to every 
individual^ so that the secret walk with Grod may be found by 
every one for his own soul. As a fundamental principle of 
theology (principium theologicum), on the other hand, this 
representation of the internal light (lumen internum) is of 
no use whatever, simply because it rests on fiction. If it 
were true, if the Lord our God did give to each one personally 
not merely a disposition, an emotion, a perception, but a real 
knowledge of God, then he who has been thus mystically in- 



Chap. II] THE OPERATION OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 351 

spired should be able to speak just like the prophets of old, and 
the witness of one should confirm the witness of another. 
Such, however, is not the case. You never receive from 
these mystics a clear communication of what has been revealed 
in this way to enrich our knowledge of God. For the most 
part they even avoid clear language, and hide themselves 
behind indefinite expressions of feeling and sounds with- 
out rational sense. And where they go a little farther and 
come to the communication of definite representations, you 
always notice one of two things : either they borrow the 
content of their communications from the Holy Scriptures, 
or fall back entirely into natural theology, and treat you to 
philosophemes well known from other quarters. From this 
it appears that the pretended communication of knowledge 
of God, which they claim to receive, is the fruit of self- 
deception. The Holy Spirit simply does not work along 
this individual way, at least not now, after the Scriptures 
are completed. What the Holy Spirit personally does, is to 
direct faith to the revealed knowledge of God, to explain and 
apply this revealed knowledge of God to the heart according 
to its particular need, and also to quicken in the soul a lively 
sense of truth ; but along this individual way He does not 
impart an increase of content. 

With a clear understanding of this, the best known mystics 
have modified this monotonous-individual conception of inspi- 
ration. This conception was not interesting enough, there- 
fore they have inclined to perpetuate the prophets' mantle. 
Not every child of God has received such an inspiration, 
but only a few. As in former times among the twelve 
tribes there were no twelve prophets of infl.uence at once, 
but generally a single "man of God" appeared in a given 
period, so the work of God is carried on now. Hence there 
are present-day prophets ; not many, but a few ; now here, 
then there. These men of God receive special inspirations, 
which do not tend so much to enrich our knowledge of God, 
but rather serve to make prophecies concerning coming dis- 
asters, to establish the claim that all God's people shall sub- 
ject themselves to such a mystical prophet, and to regulate 



352 § 68. REPRESENTATIONS CONCERNING [Div. Ill 

life and religion according to his orders. This, then, is no 
longer the theory of an individual, internal light in every 
child of God, but the representation that prophetic inspira- 
tion, as an extraordinary instrument, was not merely tempo- 
ral and local, but is ever continuous. With this conception 
the Holy Scriptures are always assumed as existent ; from 
those Scriptures material is drawn ; and only the temporal 
and local application of what was revealed in those Scriptures 
is vindicated for the mystical fanatic. The tendency reveals 
itself indeed again and again to soar paracletically above the 
revelation of the Scriptures, and Montanistically to wander 
off ; but this is almost always the sure sign of approaching 
dissolution. As soon as the break with the Scripture is 
entire, the spiritual authority of what was mystically in- 
spired is ended. 

They who seek the proximate cause (principium proximum) 
exclusively in the Holy Scriptures, do not deny the mystical 
inworkings of the Holy Spirit upon individuals, but maintain 
that this mystical inworking as such never leads to knowledge 
of God, and therefore can only be added by way of explana- 
tion and application to the knowledge of God obtained else- 
where. With this they do not deny, that an inspiration 
which brings knowledge of God is possible, but they assert 
that this is not general but exceptional, and is not primarily 
for the benefit of individuals but organically for the good 
of the whole. It remains to them therefore an open ques- 
tion, whether God the Lord could have followed the mystic 
individual way of communicating the knowledge of Him- 
self ; but it is certain that God did not take this way, and 
that His not taking this atomistic way is in close harmony 
with the entire method of knowledge in our human race. 
Our race does not know by adding together what is known 
\>j A -\- B -{- C^ but knows organically. There is a process in 
this knowledge. This knowledge developing itself in pro- 
cess is the common property of all, and each one takes part in 
this treasure according to the measure of his susceptibility. 
This organic conception of our human knowledge lies, there- 
fore, in the very creation of our race, and it does not surprise 



CiiAP. II] THE OPERATION OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 353 

US that God the Lord has also revealed His divine knowledge 
for the sinner in an organic way. Hence inspiration is no in- 
shining of God's Spirit in the human spirit that endlessly 
repeats itself, but an action from the side of God which 
is limited to a definite period and bound to definite condi- 
tions. That which is revealed of the knowledge of God 
within this given period of time and in connection with 
those conditions forms one ivhole; not by the addition of one 
revelation to the other, but in virtue of the fact that the 
one rich thought of God develops itself ever more richly 
from one germ. And since now this process has been ended, 
so that this revealed knowledge of God has been brought 
Avithin the reach of our race, there can of course be no more 
real inspiration, and the individual and organic working of 
the Holy Spirit which follows after, can have no other ten- 
dency than to lead and to enlighten the Church in the spir- 
itual labor which it must expend upon this revelation. This 
organic interpretation, then, brings with it that whatever you 
confess concerning the H0I3" Scriptures is only valid when 
they are completed, so that during the ages which intervened 
between Paradise and Patmos, the self-revelation of God 
to His people bore in part a different character. From 
this point of view distinction is made between the first 
period in which the tree begins its growth, and that other 
period, when year by year the tree casts its fruit into your 
lap. Thus inspiration appears as a temporal activity, which 
effects a result, organic in nature, and of an organic signifi- 
cance for our entire race. It has had a beginning, and also 
an ending ; and the benefit we derive is no longer a con- 
tinuous inspiration, but the fruit of the finished inspiration. 
Not as though this fruit is simply cast at the sinner's feet, 
for him to do with as he pleases. On the contrary, there 
are operations of the Holy Spirit, by which He renders the 
use of this fruit possible for the sinner. Illumination, the 
witness of the Holy Spirit, the sacred office, the leadership 
of the Church, etc., all exert an influence on this. In the 
sphere of the new life all these operations of the Holy Spirit 
are no longer abnormal, but normal^ and therefore may never 



354 §68. REPRESENTATIONS CONCERNING [Div. Ill 

be placed in a line with the ever abnormal inspiration. In- 
spiration, therefore, is here taken in connection with all sorts 
of other operations of the Holy Spirit, as an abnormal, tem- 
poral, organic process, the fruit of which lies before us in 
the Holy Scripture. The desire to draw the boundary lines 
sharply here between the normal and the abnormal, ex- 
pressed itself most clearly in the rejection of the apocrypha. 
The third point of view, that of the Romish Church, does 
not differ essentially from this. Rome also rejects the 
mystic-atomistic character of inspiration, and interprets it 
organically. Rome also affirms a difference, though in a 
weaker form, between the first growth and the later life of 
this plant. The abnormal character of inspiration is equally 
certain to Rome as to us. About the authority, therefore, 
of the Holy Scripture, you will not readily come in contro- 
versy with Rome. But the point of view held by Rome 
differs entirely from ours, when Rome does not bring special 
inspiration to a close with Patmos, but continues it till the 
present day in the Church, even in the bishop of Rome e ca- 
thedra loquente. This exerts a twofold influence. First, as 
far as it adds to the content of the Holy Scriptures, and 
again, in so much as the Church absolutely interprets the 
Scripture. Since the prophets and apostles are no more 
among the living, but the Church always is, it is evident 
that neither prophets nor apostles can exercise any com- 
pulsory authority in the Church, while by its official inter- 
pretation the Church has it always in her power to interpret 
the utterances of prophets and apostles as she likes. It 
should be observed, not only that from this view-point inspi- 
ration is always continuous, but also that the inspiration of 
the past becomes of secondary significance, compared to the 
inspiration of later times. And this is what Rome has come 
to, by weakening the difference between the normal and the 
abnormal. The operations of the Holy Spirit in the sphere 
of the new life through the ordained ministry and the coun- 
cils of ecclesiastics are placed on one line with the inspira- 
tion of Moses, David or Isaiah ; the apocrypha share the 
authority of the canonical books; and on the other side, the 



Chap. II] THE OPERATION OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 355 

applying and expository operations of the Holy Spirit are 
withdrawn from the individual life and concentrated in that 
which is official. 

We pass by the small differences from each of these three 
points of view which occur in Greek, Lutheran, and Baptist 
Theology. In this section it was our only purpose, where 
the ultimate cause (principium remotum) is fixed, to distin- 
guish the conceptions which had been formed of the manner 
in which the Divine energy, in revealing itself to sinners, 
had reached its result. This process has been represented 
either as mystic-atomistic or as organic. The first has been 
done by all fanatics, the latter by all churches. But though 
all the churches have agreed in the organic interpretation of 
Revelation, they have separated in this : namely, one group 
has conceived inspiration not merely as organic, but temporal 
as well, and consequently as completed ; while Rome still 
thinks that inspiration is continuous in the organism of the 
Church. 

§ 69. The Relation between this Principium and our Con- 
sciousness 

For the present, we leave the further study of the differ- 
ent conceptions that are formed of the working of this 
principium, in order to go back to the more weighty ques- 
tion of the connection between this principium and our 
consciousness — a question the answer to which lies for 
us in the qualification of this connection as immediate. 
There is no third something, that guarantees to our con- 
sciousness the reality of this principium. The working of 
this principium upon our consciousness is direct. This is 
really self-evident, since every principium finds its peculiar 
character in this, that it is itself ground^ and therefore 
allows no ground under itself ; but in the case of the prin- 
cipium of theology ideas have been so confused, that a 
separate study of it cannot be omitted. For the sake of 
clearness we start from the ultimate cause, i.e. from special 
inspiration. Grod from His own mind breathes (inspirat) 
into the mind of man, more particularly into the mind of 



356 § 69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Diy. Ill 

sinful man, and that, too, in a special manner. This, and 
nothing else, is the principium, from which knowledge of 
God comes to us sinners, and from which also theology 
as a science draws its vital power. That besides this 
inspiration there is also manifestation, and that both inspi- 
ration and manifestation are related to what, thanks to 
common grace, has remained in and about us of natural the- 
ology, is neither denied by this nor lost from sight, and will 
appear later on. To prevent misunderstanding, however, 
the principium must here be taken as simply as possible ; 
and then this principium lies in God, in so far as He from 
his Divine consciousness inspires something into the con- 
sciousness of the sinner. Imagine this act of God away; 
say that it does not exist; deny this agency, which goes out 
from God ; and no theology remains. All that remains is 
poetry, conjecture, supposition ; but you have no more 
theology. It will not do to say " est Deus in nobis, agi- 
tante calescimus illo," for this is nothing but an emotion 
in your feelings, a vibration of a Divine power in your 
inner life, a something that can very well take place, repeat 
itself and continue, without effecting any knowledge of 
God in you. For this very reason this inspiration of Grod 
into the human mind, as often as it takes place, is sufficient 
unto itself. Who on earth can know what takes place 
between God and my heart, but myself; and how can I 
know that that which works in me goes out from God to 
me, except God Himself gives me the certainty of convic- 
tion concerning this? The sense of this stands entirely in 
line with every other primordial sense, such as with the 
sense of our ego, of our existence, of our life, of our calling, 
of our continuance, of our laws of thought, etc. All that 
God gives me in the natural way, to constitute my sense 
as a human being, I not merely receive from Him, but by 
Him alone is it guaranteed to me. When this sense of cer- 
tainty becomes weak, I become sceptical, I lose my higher 
energy of life, and end in madness, and no human reason- 
ing can restore to me the lost certainty of my human start- 
ing-point. The only difference here is, that the general 



Chap. II] THIS PRINCIPIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 357 

principles of my consciousness are common to me with 
almost all men, while with the inspiration of Grod into the 
mind of the sinner^ one has it and the other has it not, 
so that these two stand over against each other. He who 
has it not, must deny it ; and he who has it, is often shocked 
by the contradiction of him who has it not. This, however, 
is not the case with inspiration only. In many other 
domains one knows an inner impulse, which is foreign to 
another. Think of the poet, the virtuoso, the hero, and 
the adventurer. The want of general consent is no proof 
of want of foundation, and often works the effect, that con- 
viction becomes the more firmly founded. Contradiction 
can weaken, but it can also strengthen. The question only 
is, whether there is sufficient ground for the fact of its 
being present in one and absent in the other. Therefore, 
the Reformed theologians have ever considered theology 
also to rest upon the election. If one reasons that all 
men are entitled to the same thing, and that every sinner 
has the right to equal gifts of grace, then the fact "that 
all men have not faith " (2 Thess. iii. 2) is an " offence " to 
us ; and this weakens our sense of what God works upon 
and in our soul. Hence there is nothing to be done about 
it, that one man is more deeply sensible of this than another, 
and that even this sense of God's inspiration appears much 
more clearly in one age than in another. Human supports 
avail nothing here. When the fogs are too dense, the sun 
cannot penetrate to us in its full splendor ; as soon as they 
lift or lessen, the light of itself shines again more brightly in 
our eyes ; and the law remains intact : in thy light shall ive see 
light. The conflict concerning the reality of inspiration may 
safely, therefore, be ended. Because it is primordial, it cannot 
be demonstrated ; and because it is sufficient unto itself and 
admits of no proof, it cannot be harmed by counterproof. 
And it was seen by our fathers entirely correctly, in so far 
as they founded their confession of the Scripture ultimately 
upon no other testimony than the ivitness of the Holy 
Spirit. All that you add to this may serve as a support to 
the side-wall, but is never, either wholly or in part, the 



358 § 69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Div. Ill 

foundation for the building. If, therefore, our knowledge 
of God is only derived from the self-communication of God, 
i.e. is the fruit of inspiration, then God as inspirer (Deus 
inspirans) must be the principium, the first agent in our 
knowledge of God ; and the finding of a something hack of 
this principium, from which it should follow or flow, is 
simply inconceivable. 

The objection, indeed, may be raised, that in this way 
two principles, entirely separated from each other, operate 
in our consciousness : on one side God as Creator (Deus 
creans), and on the other God as inspirer (Deus inspirans), 
and more particularly in a special manner (modo speciali). 
And this we readily grant. This zs, indeed, unnatural, 
and, in a sense, does violence to our consciousness. A two- 
fold source of knowledge in our consciousness is not in 
accord with the original demand of our consciousness ; and 
he who lives and thinks strongly, can never cease from the 
effort to make those two one, or to cause one of those two 
to disappear. Indeed, this duality of principium is no slight 
obstacle in the way of the assurance of faith, with reference 
to the special principium. Almost all doubt arises from this 
dualism. Furthermore, the result must be, that finally this 
duality shall fall away again, and that the unity of principium 
shall be restored in our consciousness. Such, indeed, it shall 
be in the state of glory. In the status gloriae there shall be 
" no more temple in the city," but also no more Bible in the 
oratory. A Bible in the oratory is a sign that you yourself 
are still a sinner in a sinful world. Sinner or no sinner, 
therefore, is the question which here, too, is decisive ; in 
him who is still sinless or who is no longer a sinner, no con- 
flict, no duality in his consciousness can operate from the 
side of his God ; and in him, therefore, no second principium 
of Divine knowledge can be added to the original natural 
principium. But if you reckon with sin, then, of course, it is 
not sufficient that you recognize the incompleteness of our 
human conditions ; or acknowledge that a great distance still 
separates your ideal of love and holiness from your actual 
nature ; neither is it sufficient that you heap all sorts of 



Chap. II] THIS PRINCIPIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 359 

reproaches upon yourself, and whet the sword against sin. 
All this does not touch the principium of the knoivledge of G-od. 
This is only touched, when you yourself know that a breach 
has taken place; and that sin has so broken you, that the 
channels, through which the knowledge of God flowed to 
you in virtue of your creation, have been stopped up and 
otherwise injured, and that thus it is an assured fact to you, 
that from this natural principium, however good in itself, be- 
cause once broken and injured, no real knowledge of God can 
any more come to you. Then only will your consciousness 
be disposed to look upon a second, a different, a temporarily 
auxiliary, principium as natural ; and with this disposition 
only will your consciousness be able to grasp the guarantee 
of the Divine witness in this witness itself. On the other 
hand, it is equally true that this deep sense of sin, by which 
you learn to know your state as broken before God, does 
not come to you from the natural principium, but only 
from this special principium. There is an interaction here. 
The more powerful your conviction of sin is, the more readily 
you grasp the special principium, as suited to your condi- 
tion ; and also, the more decided you are in your acceptance 
of the knowledge of God from this special principium, the 
deeper the sense of being a sinner before Grod will strike 
root in you. Later on it will be shown, how this witness of 
the Holy Spirit in its structure is also ethical in its nature. 
Here, however, let it be said, that this witness of the Holy 
Spirit always roots in the conviction of sin, and in degree of 
certainty runs parallel with the certainty of your sense of 
guilt. 

What is said above would not lightly rouse contradiction, 
if this inspiration of Grod into the mind of the sinner took 
place individually. Even those who stand outside of this 
inspiration would then acknowledge that they can deny the 
reality of it for themselves, but not for others. But, and this 
is the difficulty, this principium does not work in this way. 
To speak plainly, there is no inspiration which goes out 
directly from God to the soul's consciousness of every one 
of the elect separately, and offers the same content to all, one 



360 § 69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Div. Ill 

by one ; on the contrary, there is one central revelation given 
for all, and it is from this central revelation that every elect 
one is to draw for himself his knowledge of God. Public 
charity may provide each poor man a sum of money with 
which to buy provisions for himself, or may spread in a hall 
a common table from which all poor people may be fed. 
And thus it might be conceived that God should give to 
every sinner whom He chose a special light in the soul, an 
individual inspiration in his consciousness, and that every 
one should have enough of this for himself. This is what 
the mystics of every sort affirm. But such has not been the 
will of God. God the Lord has spread one table for His 
entire Church, has given one organically connected revela- 
tion for all, and it is from this one revelation designed for 
all, and which neither repeats nor continues itself, that the 
churches of all places and times, and in those churches 
every child of God, has to draw his knowledge of the 
Eternal Being. And the witness of this one central reve- 
lation which neither repeats nor continues itself, lies for us 
in the Holy Scripture. Not, of course, as though that Bible, 
by itself, were sufficient to give, to every one who reads it, 
the true knowledge of God. We positively reject such a 
mechanical explanation ; and by their teaching of the wit- 
ness of the Holy Spirit as absolutely indispensable for all 
conviction concerning the Scripture, by their requirement of 
illumination for the right understanding of the Scripture, and 
by their high esteem of the ministry of the Word for the ap- 
plication of the Scripture, our fathers have sufficiently shown 
that such a mechanical explanation cannot be ascribed to 
them. That they nevertheless took the Holy Scripture, and 
nothing else, as principium of the knowledge of God, yea, as 
the sole principium, had its ground in the circumstance that 
in the witness of the Holy Spirit, in the enlightening and 
in the application by the ministry of the Word, there is a 
recognition of what happens to or in the subject, in order 
that what has been revealed may be appropriated by him ; 
but by these the knowledge of God itself is not increased 
nor changed. That knowledge of God as such does not 



Chap. II] THIS PRINCIFIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 361 

come to the sinner from a mystical inworking of the Holy 
Spirit, neither from the illumination of the regenerate, nor 
from what the preacher adds to the Scripture, but simply 
from what he takes from the Scripture. Viewed from what- 
ever point, the Holy Scripture always remains the real prin- 
cipium which brings about the knowledge of God. How 
this expression principium, applied to the Holy Scripture, is 
to be understood, can only be explained later on ; it is enough 
that here we translate the individualistic-mystical conception 
of inspiration into the organically general one. When we 
viewed inspiration in relation to individual man, we said : In 
the sinner, so far as pertains to the knowledge of God, the 
natural principium has been maimed, so that no more new 
or sufficient knowledge of God comes to man through this 
channel. This is remedied by a second principium which as 
principium speciale is provisionally added to the first. This 
principium also is, if you please, God Himself, or goes out 
from God. He it is who inspires knowledge of Himself in a 
special manner into the mind of the sinner (in mentem homi- 
nis peccatoris modo special! sui cognitionem inspirat) ; and 
consequently He alone can give assurance concerning His 
revelation. It concerns here a principium in the proper 
sense under or back of which therefore there can lie none 
other. Applying this to the central Revelation, we now 
say : Our human race, once fallen in sin, can have no more 
supply of pure or sufficient knowledge of God from the 
natural principium. Consequently God effects an auxiliary 
revelation for our human race, which, from a special princi- 
pium of its own and under the necessary conditions, places a 
knowledge of God within the reach of the sinner which is 
suited to his condition. It took many centuries to accom- 
plish this central Revelation, until it reached its completion. 
The description of this action of God, i.e. the providing of 
this central Revelation for our human race, is contained in 
the Holy Scripture. He who would know this central Reve- 
lation, must seek it therefore in the Holy Scripture. And 
in that sense the question, where the special principium with 
the central Revelation to our race as its fruit is now to be 



362 § 69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Div. Ill 

found, must be answered without hesitation as follows : In the 
Holy Scripture and in the Holy Scripture alone. 

If, however, this is taken as if the knowledge of God hidden 
in the Bible, but not the Bible itself, has come to the sinner 
from God, then a link in the chain is cracked, and the chain 
breaks. For then indeed the Bible as such is nothing but 
an accidental, human annotation, and we have first to decide 
which parts of it do or do not hold firm. As criterium for 
this we have no individual inspiration ; if we had, the whole 
conception of a central-organic revelation would again fall 
away. Hence we have no other criterium at our disposal than 
our natural principium. And thus the outcome of it must be, 
that from this untenable view-point you not only ravel out the 
Scripture by historic criticism, but also annul the content 
of the central Revelation and reduce it to the natural prin- 
cipium, in order finally to deny every special principium, and 
after the completed round of the circle to return to the nothing 
with which you began. Thus indeed it has actually taken 
place. Having stripped the whole Scripture of its leaves, 
having peeled and shelled it, we come back, after a struggle 
of eighteen centuries, by way of Origen, to the Greek philos- 
ophers, and the choice remains : Aristotle or Plato. This 
could not be otherwise, as soon as once the Scripture was 
placed outside the Revelation, and it was for the sake of pro- 
tection against this that our fathers emphasized so strongly 
the Divine authorship of the Scripture as such. Even as 
your person, by an optical process, photographs itself and 
produces its own image upon the collodion plate, so it is 
likewise the Revelation itself which has given its own image 
in the Holy Scripture. The Scripture as the document of 
the central Revelation is therefore organically connected 
with that Revelation itself. The ice in which, in summer, 
cold is condensed and conserved for you, is organically one 
with the cold which it brings you. It was cold which caused 
the water to congeal, and from the ice the cool breath is 
refreshingly wafted to you. Therefore in olden times it 
was ever emphasized that the content and form of the Holy 
Scripture were most intimately and organically connected. 



Chap. II] TIIIS PRINCIPIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 363 

and that not merely its content but also its form sprang from 
the principium speciah, i.e. from that special action which 
has gone out from God to our sinful race, in order to 
discover Himself to the sinner. The distinction of course 
between these two actions of the Holy Spirit must ever 
be kept in view ; even more sharply than our fathers were 
accustomed to do this. For by their summary exposition 
they gave some occasion for the idea, that it were almost 
indifferent whether in earlier ages a real revelation had ever 
taken place, so long as we but had the Scripture. With 
a too high estimate of the chart which was drawn of the 
country, the country itself at times seemed a superfluity. 
In this way spiritual intellectualism was fed, and oftentimes 
the reality of history was sacrificed to a barren abstraction. 
The representation of a Bible dictated word for word did 
not originate from it, but was materially advanced by it : an 
error which of course cannot be overcome, except first the 
inspiration that operated in the revelation itself be sepa- 
rately considered, and then a proper representation be given 
of the inspiration that operated in and with the compilation 
of the canon of the Holy Scripture. But however strongly 
we emphasize that the real inspiration of the Scripture 
must be carefully distinguished from the inspiration of the 
revelation as entirely dissimilar, yet this may never be 
taken as though the one action of the Spirit stood in no 
organic relation to the other. Both, indeed, are expressions 
of the one will of God, to grant to our race, lost in sin, a 
central Revelation, and to bring this central Revelation 
within the reach of all ages and people. 

For the simple believer it is, therefore, by no means neces- 
sary to consider this distinction, provided he makes no dogma 
of his own thoughtless representation, and with this dogma, 
formulated on his own authority, resists the accurate repre- 
sentation. ITow the central Revelation has come, concerns 
the believer only in so far as it must be to him the fruit of 
the grace of Grod — of God, and of that God in His grace. 
It is quite enough if the Holy Scripture is but the Word 
of God's grace, by which he may live and die. The Heidel- 



364 § 69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Div. Ill 

berg Catechism requires, therefore, no theory concerning the 
Scripture, but merely asks that one believe^ and believe in 
such a way, " that one hold for truth all that God has re- 
vealed to us in his word" (answer 21). The Scripture, 
and all the historic content of which that Scripture bears 
witness, is therefore not something by itself, which inserts 
itself with a certain independence between our conscious- 
ness and God, as the principium of revelation; but is as the 
wave of ether, upon which the beam of light from the 
source of light moves itself directly to our eye. To him who 
does not feel that, at the moment when he opens the Holy 
Scripture, God comes by and in it and touches his very soul, 
the Scripture is not yet the Word of God, or has ceased to 
be this; or it is this in his spiritual moments, but not at 
other times, as when the veil lies again on his heart, while 
again it is truly such when the veil is taken away. With 
the Holy Scripture it can never be a God afar off, and the 
Scripture a something God sends from afar. The telephone 
rather supplies an illustration that interprets this reality. 
God is, indeed, a God afar off ; but He approaches you by 
and in the Scripture ; unveils His presence to you; and speaks 
to you as though you were standing right by Him, and He 
drew you close beneath His wings. The action on God's side 
is not ended when the Scripture is completed for all nations. 
The revealing activity is then, indeed, completed and decided 
to the end, in so far as the central instrument is concerned, 
and nothing will ever be added to it ; but this is not all. 
This central instrument of revelation is not placed in the 
midst of the world, in order that God may now look on and 
see what man will do with it. On the contrary, now follows 
that entirely distinct action of preserving the Scripture, of 
interpreting and of applying the Scripture, and — still more 
specially — of bringing the Scripture to individual souls, of 
preparing those souls for its reception, and bringing them in 
contact with it, and thus finally, by what our Reformed 
Theologians called providentia specialissima, of rendering this 
Scripture a special revelation for this and that given person. 
The confession of all those who have possessed the Scripture 



Chap. II] THIS PKINCIPIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 365 

most fully and enjoyed it most richly, has ever been that it 
was God who brought them to the Scripture and the Scripture 
to them ; that He opened their eyes, so that they might un- 
derstand the Scripture; and that only by the light which shone 
on them from the Scripture, light has appeared in their own 
person and the life round about them. 

At no single point of the way is there place, therefore, for 
a support derived from demonstration or reasoning. There 
is no man that seeks, and seeking finds the Scripture, and 
with its help turns himself to his God. But rather from 
beginning to end it is one ceaselessly continued action which 
goes out from God to man, and operates upon him, even as 
the light of the sun operates upon the grain of corn that lies 
hidden in the ground, and draws it to the surface, and causes 
it to grow into a stalk. In God, therefore, is the principium 
from which this entire action proceeds. This principium of 
grace in God brings it to pass that a central Revelation is 
established in and for our sinful race. That same principium 
is the agent by which the image of that Revelation is reflected 
in the Scripture. And it is again that same principium of 
grace, the motive power of which goes out to the soul of the 
sinner, that by the Scripture it may bind him personally to 
that Revelation, and by that Revelation back again to his 
God. From this it follows of itself that with each one per- 
sonally you must distinguish between his experimental 
(netto) and purely intellectual (bruto) faith in the Script- 
ure, i.e. between that in the Scripture which has been 
personally assured to his heart by the living God, and all 
the rest, which still lies outside of the life of his soul, and 
only bears a holy character for the sake of its connection with 
the first, though it is as yet unknown to him. The propor- 
tions of these experimental and intellectual faiths will be 
different with every individual according to the depth of 
his inner life and the flight of his wings. It will be con- 
stantly modified with each person whose life of faith ad- 
vances, so that the experimental and intellectual faith will 
proportionately decrease and increase. But however this 
purely intellectual (bruto) faith may diminish, it is not con- 



366 §69. THE RELATION BETWEEN [Div. Ill 

ceivable that there has ever been one single believer to whom 
the entire Scripture has been the possession of his heart. 
This may even be maintained of those who have literally 
covered the entire Bible, and have served the Church of 
God with an exposition of its entire contents. Just be- 
cause the Divine character of the Scripture rests for us 
exclusively on faith, the richest exposition can never consti- 
tute anything for us a Word of God. The distinction must 
clearly be maintained. What God Himself does not bear 
witness to in your soul personally (not mystic-absolutely, 
but through the Scriptures) can never be known and con- 
fessed by you as Divine. Finite reasoning can never obtain 
the infinite as its result. If God then withdraws Himself, 
if in the soul of men He bear no more witness to the truth 
of His Word, men can no longer believe, and no apologetics^ 
however brilliant, will ever be able to restore the blessing of 
faith in the Scripture. Faith, quickened by God Himself, is 
invincible ; pseudo-faith, which rests merely upon reasoning, 
is devoid of all spiritual reality, so that it bursts like a soap- 
bubble as soon as the thread of your reasoning breaks. 

The relation between the principium of Theology and our 
consciousness can therefore be nothing else than immediate. 
Not immediate in the sense that God could not be pleased 
to make use of all kinds of transmissions, arrangements and 
processes, by which to reach man's inmost soul; but such 
that at no single point of the line the natural principium 
can come in between to fill up the void, which might remain 
open in the going out of the principium of grace to our 
heart. The principium gratiae operates from the side of 
God right through the periods of Revelation, the Scripture, 
the mystical union, etc., till our heart has been reached and 
touched ; and our heart gives itself captive, not because 
critically it allows and approves the approach of God ; but 
because it can offer no resistance, and must give itself captive 
to the operation which goes out from God. 

All faith in the Scripture quickened by God, and in God 
quickened by the Scripture, which does not bear this imme- 
diate character, and would borrow its assurance from any 



Chap. II] THIS PRIXCIPIUM AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 367 

course of reasoning, is therefore absurd. For you must accept 
one of two things, either that each one personally must reason 
this out for himself, or that only a few are able to do this, 
so that the others must depend upon these few. The first 
is impossible, for the simple reason that not one-tenth per 
cent, of the children of men are capable of entering upon 
the required investigation ; and the second is equally im- 
possible, since then you would substitute faith on human 
authority in the place of faith in God. Moreover, faith 
is not a demand that belongs to the more advanced periods 
of life, but it must be exercised from youth up ; how, then, 
would you have faith be born as the result of a study, of 
which the best are not capable until the years of mid-life ? 
It should also be observed, how in this way the faith of one 
would continually be shocked by the mistakes in the inves- 
tigation of another. What would it profit you, if you had 
reached a sufficient and satisfactory result for yourself ? To- 
morrow a book appears with new objections, and then every- 
thing with you must remain unsettled, so long as you cannot 
successfully unnerve all those new objections. Scarcely, how- 
ever, has this been accomplished, when still another advances 
new difficulties, and thus you are engulfed in an endless 
whirl between doubt and faith. Worse still: after a study 
of more than twelve centuries spent on the Scriptures, 
there is yet no faintest outlook that these studies will ever 
lead to a satisfactory result. The conflict concerning the 
Holy Scriptures will most likely be continued till the final 
return of the Lord. How, then, can faith ever rest on the 
result of these studies as foundation, when its presence has 
been a necessity from the beginning, and when in those early 
times, in which there was no question of these studies, 
faith was most vital and powerful ? For no single moment, 
therefore, may we entertain the admission that argument 
may be the ground of conviction. This would be a " pass- 
ing into another kind," which is logically condemned. Faith 
gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness 
it rests immediately on the testimony of God ; but without 
this support, everything that announces itself as faith is 



368 § 70. RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

merely a weaker form of opinion based on probability, 
which capitulates the moment a surer knowledge supersedes 
your defective evidence. 

And as regards the objection, that all this is very e:^- 
cellent, provided it does not include the Scriptures, and 
no other thought is entertained than of the mystical com- 
munion with the eternal Being, simple reference to what was 
explained in § 46 sq. would suffice ; but even without this 
reference, we might say that, as a matter of fact^ such faith 
has only shown itself where it concerned the Holy Scriptures. 
In other circles many different emotions have likewise been 
experienced, brilliant exhibitions of ethical heroism been 
seen, and many sorts of religious expressions observed, both 
sesthetic and otherwise ; but here we treat of the '' Knowl- 
edge of God " (Cognitio Dei) and of the principia from which 
this knowledge of God flows. And that faith, which leads 
individuals and whole circles to conscious worship, not of the 
" Unknown God " at Athens, but of the known Father who 
is in heaven, is not found, except where the Scriptures 
have been the Divine instrument, in God's hand, of that 
knowledge. 

§ 70. Relation between this Principium and the Natural 

Principium 

The acknowledgment of the Holy Scriptures as the prin- 
cipium of theology gives rise to an antithesis between this 
principium and the common principium of our knowledge. 
From this antithesis a certain relation between the two is 
born, and this relation also must be investigated. We speak 
here only of theology in the narrower sense as knowledge 
of G-od (cognitio Dei), and in so far we might limit our- 
selves to the relation between natural and revealed theology 
(theologia naturalis and revelata), which is virtually the 
contents of this section. But this we will not do. First, 
because the formal action of our thinking is also involved, 
and secondly, because with natural theology one thinks more 
of the content^ while here we are interested almost exclusively 
with the principium from which this content flows. 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM 369 

As stated above, the natural principium not only may 
not be ignored, but is even permanent and lasting, while 
the special principium falls away as soon as its task is 
ended. Only with this reservation can we speak of a 
twofold principium. A twofold principium of knowledge 
is thinkable with reference to different objects, as, for in- 
stance, God and the cosmos ; but not, as in this case, with 
reference to God alone. In both cases indeed, in natural 
and in revealed theology, we speak of knowledge of God, of 
knowledge, therefore, of the same God, and of knowledge 
of the same God to be obtained by the same subject, i.e. 
man, or more correctly, humanity. No doubt a temporary 
inability in man may render the knowledge of God no 
more sufficiently possible for him in the normal way, and 
thus it must be supplied in an abnormal way ; but this does 
not modify the fundamental plan, and the outcome must 
ever be, that the knowledge of Grod is imparted to humanity 
in the normal, and hence in only one way. At present nature 
stands temporarily over against grace; but in the end, in 
glorified nature, there will be no more question of grace. 
All that the Holy Scripture teaches concerning the knowl- 
edge of God in its consummation, aims, indeed, at a 
condition in which the abnormality of the ordinance of 
redemption falls entirely away, and whatever was grounded 
in creation returns, but carried up to its end (reXo?). In 
part it even seems as though Christ then effaces Himself, 
in order that it may be "God all in all." Even as Christ 
before His death pointed His disciples away from Himself 
to the Father, saying : " I say not unto you, that I will pray 
the Father for you; for the Father himself loveth you." 

This implies at the same time, that the eternally enduring 
knowledge of God, possessed by the redeemed, shall not be 
after the nature of the special, but according to the nature 
of the natural principium. However rich the dispensation 
of grace may be, it ever remains a bandage applied to the 
injured part of the body, and is never that vital part itself. 
When a wound of the throat prevents the taking of food 
in the common way, it may be brought into the stomach 



370 § 70. KELATION BETWEEN THIS PKINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

artificially. The purpose of this, however, is always to 
save life^ by the vitality thus saved to bring on healing, so 
that finally food ma}^ agaiu enter the stomach in the normal 
way through the throat. The scaffolding placed before a 
dilapidated gable may be the only enclosure about the house 
for a long time, and may render it quite invisible, but the 
purpose in view is, that presently the scaffold shall disappear, 
and the house itself be seen again, and remain in its normal 
condition. In a similar sense it must be confessed of the 
original principium of knowledge, that by sin it has become 
temporarily insufficient and has been rendered incapable ; 
that consequently the temporary aid of another principium 
has become indispensable ; but that the tendency of this can 
be no other than to restore the natural principium, i.e. the 
principium grounded in our nature to its normal activity ; 
and as soon as this has been realized, to dismiss the special 
principium, which renders merely a temporary service. Let 
no misunderstanding, however, enter here. We by no means 
assert that the purpose of extraordinary revelation is to re- 
store us to the knowledge of God which Adam had. All 
knowledge we possess in this earthly dispensation shall pass 
away^ and in place of this defective knowledge there is to 
come the "seeing face to face." Even now the form of 
our consciousness differs by day and by night ; ecstasy and 
vision affect us differently from common fancy and sober 
reasoning. But this effects no change in our psychic con- 
stitution. Even if you imagine sin never to have entered, 
so that no ruin of our nature had taken place, and there 
would consequently have been no question of a special revela- 
tion, the knowledge, nevertheless, which Adam had as con- 
nate, would sometime have passed into the "seeing face to 
face." The butterfly exhibits an entirely different form 
from the caterpillar, and yet that butterfly came forth from 
the natural conditions of the caterpillar, without any assist- 
ance in the transition from an abnormal something. Call the 
knowledge which Adam had in paradise the caterpillar, and 
the "knowing face to face " the beautiful butterfly, and you 
perceive how this higher and to be completed knowledge 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM 371 

belongs, nevertheless, to the sphere of the natural and not 
to the sphere of the special principium. 

This, however, has been heretofore too much overlooked by 
orthodox theology. Losing itself almost entirely in the con- 
tent of the special revelation, it has taken this too much for 
the essential one, and has scarcely been able to represent it 
otherwise than that this special revelation is to be perma- 
nent. The insight, that of course the Scripture ceases its 
use to us with our dying, that after death no sacrament is any 
more conceivable, and that in the realm of glory the Christo- 
logical period, if we may so express it, shall disappear, in 
order that the triune God may again be " all in all " has not 
been given its place even dogmatically. Rome, by the ac- 
tion of the church on earth in behalf of the dead, had con- 
centrated eschatology entirely into the period preceding 
the Judgment-day ; the Reformation neglected eschatology 
sorely ; what from the side of modern orthodoxy has been 
supplied in our times to make us think of a church with a 
soteriologic ministry beyond the grave, has occasioned mere 
confusion ; when the state of the blest was considered, it 
was more a mystical fanaticism than the sober putting of 
the question of the consciousness of the redeemed : it is not 
strange, therefore, that the question, from what " principium 
of knowledge" the redeemed will think, was not even formu- 
lated. Light on the subject, however, was not wanting. 
"Prophecies, tongues, knowledge," everything that consti- 
tutes our riches here, will disappear, according to the word 
of the apostle. Special revelation is called a '^ glass," which 
renders temporary aid, to receive for us the image and reflect 
it back again ; but that glass also shall sometime belong to 
the past. And then there comes an entirely different know- 
ing, even as we are hnown^ which includes of itself, that 
this knowledge will come to us entirely by the data provided 
in creation. Not of course so as to lose anything of what 
was revealed in the rich revelation of the mercy of God in an 
uncommon way, but, and herein lies the mystery, in order to 
take up this rich gain into our normal existence ; which mys- 
tery finds its explanation in the dogma de Christo. It is 



372 § 70. RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

revealed to us, that the Mediator shall make surrender of the 
kingdom to God, even the Father, but in such a way, that 
He Himself remains eternally the Head of His mystical body 
(corpus mysticum). The Christ will not disappear, in order 
that Adam may again take his place as head of our race. On 
the contrary, Adam never resumes the place of honor lost by 
sin ; but the mystery is this, — that Christ shall sometime be 
no longer the interposed Mediator, but the natural Head of 
the human race in glory. This, however, may not detain us 
now. But the suggestion of the dogmatic relation between 
the question in hand in this section, and the questions of 
eschatology and Christology, was necessary. And provi- 
sionally our purpose is accomplished, if it is clear, why the 
whole dispensation of special grace passes away, and how 
in consequence the special principium of knowledge, from 
which theology draws its life, is destined sometime to dis- 
appear into the natural principium. 

This, however, does not explain the mutual relation of the 
two, though this indeed is most necessary, if we hope to es- 
cape the false representations abroad, especially concerning 
natural theology (theologia naturalis). If at first the Refor- 
mation fostered more accurate ideas, soon the temptation 
appeared too strong, to place natural theology as a separate 
theology alongside of special theology (theologia specialis). 
The two were then placed mechanically side by side. To 
natural theology we owed the knowledge of God's Being, 
of the Divine attributes, of His works, providence, moral 
law, the last judgment, etc., and although special theology 
made us know a great deal of sin and grace^ in fact it en- 
riched the real knowledge of God only with the knowledge 
of His " Grace " and of His " Threefold Being " ; at least, 
in so far as real clearness is concerned ; for the fundamental 
feature of this mystery too was soon thought to be also 
found among the Heathen. With this division it became 
apparent, that the real Theology as knowledge of God gave 
the lion's share to natural theology, and that the theology of 
grace^ while it occupied itself with many and exalted mys- v 
teries, in reality abandoned the foundation of all knowledge 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM 373 

of God, and therefore the heart of the matter, to its twin 
sister. This furnished natural theology the occasion to 
unfold its wings ever more broadly ; to expand itself and 
lessen the importance of special theology; until finally it has 
succeeded in stepping forth as a monarch and in contesting 
all right of utterance to special theology. And this could 
not be otherwise, and will repeat itself again and again, so 
long as the error is committed of representing special the- 
ology as sufficient in itself, and of making natural theology 
do service as Martha by the side of Mary. It is, therefore, of 
the greatest importance, to see clearly, that special theology 
may not be considered a moment without natural theology, 
and that on the other hand natural theology of itself is 
unable to supply any pure knowledge of God. 

That special revelation (revelatio specialis) is not con- 
ceivable without the hypothesis of natural theology, is 
simply because grace never creates one single new reality. 
This does not even take place in miracles. In no miracle 
does anything originate which is to be added as a new ele- 
ment to the existing cosmos. The very possibility of this 
is inconceivable and would destroy the organic character of 
the cosmos. In regeneration no new component part, which 
in creation lay outside of our being, is added to man. And 
even in the incarnation it is no new " Divine-human nature," 
which as something new (novum quid) is added to what 
exists, but our own human nature that becomes the revela- 
tion of that same God, who stood over against Adam in the 
creation. That in heaven no new reality has originated, 
needs no assertion. But since neither in heaven nor on 
earth any new reality is created by grace, how can special 
revelation stand on a root of its own ? If you go outside 
of reality, then, it is a fiction with which you cannot deal. 
If, on the other hand, as the Church confesses, it lays hold 
upon the reality of heaven and earth, then it can be no other 
than the existing reality, and in order to be true, it cannot 
borrow its strength from any but that existing reality. All 
that the Scriptures teach, therefore, concerning " the mak- 
ing of all things new," the '' new creature " and the works 



374 § 70. RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

in Christ," views at no time anything but new relations, new 
methods of existence, new forms, and never puts us face to 
face with a newly originated element. As far as the sub- 
stance is concerned, God remains unchangeable, the being of 
man is now what it was before the fall, and the cosmos is 
indeed impaired, but always the identical world of Gen. i. 1. 
In man also no new capacities are created, for even faith (as 
was shown above) roots in our nature, as created by God in 
Paradise. In what domain then can the reality be found, in 
which a special grace^ outside of natural life, could soar on 
wings of its own ? Where would be the spot to offer it a 
resting-place for the sole of its foot ? This entire represen- 
tation, therefore, as though grace had produced a knowledge 
of God of its own, which as competitor runs by the side of 
natural theology, must be most decidedly rejected. There 
can be no such special theology ; it is simply unthinkable. 
When Calvin, therefore, speaks of the " seed of religion " 
which is present in every sinner, and our Confessio Belgica 
teaches in Art. 2, " that we know God by two means. Nature 
and the Scriptures," this may not be taken in the sense of 
the later rationalistic supranaturalists, for there lies in it 
only the simple confession, that without the basis of natural 
theology there is no special theology. " God has given to all," 
says Calvin, " some apprehension of his existence, the memory 
of which he frequently and insensibly renews " (^Inst. Rel, 
Chr. I. 3. i.). " So that the sense of the Divinity can never 
be entirely lost " {Ibiderri). And it is upon the canvas of 
this natural knowledge of God itself that the special reve- 
lation is embroidered. He expresses it so accurately and 
beautifully : " the Scripture, collecting in our minds the 
otherwise confused notions of Deity, dispels the darkness, 
and gives us a clear view of the true God" (^Inst. I. 6. i.). 
It is, therefore, beside the truth when the separate mention 
of Nature and the Scripture in the Reformed confessions 
is taken as an indication of our principium of knowledge, by 
way of juxtaposition or coordination. Later dogmatici may 
have taught this, but it is not in accord with the spirit of 
Calvin or of the Reformed type of doctrine. His metaphor, 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL PRINCn>IUM 375 

that the Bible is a pair of spectacles which enables us to 
read the Divine writing in nature, may be insufficient as an 
explanation of the problem in hand ; in any case it cuts off 
absolutely every representation that the idea of natural and 
special theology as two concurrent magnitudes is derived 
from Calvin. 

If we might choose another metaphor to explain the rela- 
tion between the two, entirely in the spirit of Calvin but 
more fully, the figure of the grafted tree pleases us most. 
He who grafts, plants no new tree, but applies himself to 
one that exists. That tree is alive, it draws its sap from the 
roots, but this vital sap is wild, in consequence of which the 
tree can bear no fruit that is desired. And now the grafter 
comes, and inserts a nobler graft, and thereby brings it to 
pass that this vital sap of the wild tree is changed, so that 
the desired fruit now ripens on the branches. This new 
graft does not stand by the side of the wild tree, but is 
in it ; and if the grafting is a success, it may equally well 
be said that the true graft lives by the old tree, as that 
the uncultivated tree is of use solely because of the new 
graft. And such, indeed, is the case here. The wild tree 
is the sinner, in whose nature works the natural principium 
of the knowledge of God as an inborn impelling power. If 
you leave this natural principium to itself, you will never 
have anything else than tvild wood, and the fruit of knowl- 
edge does not come. But when the Lord our God introduces 
from without, and thus from another principium, a shoot of 
a true plant, even the principle of a pure knowledge into 
this wild tree, i.e. into this natural man, then there is not 
a man hi/ the side of a man, no knowledge hi/ the side of 
a knowledge, but the wild energy remains active in this 
human nature, i.e. incomplete knowledge ; while the ingrafted 
new principium brings it to pass, that this impelling power 
is changed and produces the fruit of true knowledge. The 
sjjecial knowledge is, indeed, a new and proper principium, 
but this principium joins itself to the vital powers of our 
nature with its natural principium ; compels this principium 
to let its life-sap flow through another channel ; and in this 



376 § 70. RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

way cultivates ripe fruit of knowledge from what otherwise 
would have produced only wood fit for fire. 

If now we investigate the" meaning of this figure, entirely 
clear by itself, it appears at once that the grafting of true 
upon wild wood is only possible because both, however 
different in quality, are one, nevertheless, in disposition of 
nature. Grafting succeeds the better in proportion to the 
closeness of correspondence between the two kinds of wood, 
and if all relationship were wanting between wild and true 
wood, grafting would simply be impossible. For the subject 
in hand, this means that natural and special theology pos- 
sess a higher unity^ are allied to one another, and, by virtue 
of this unity and relationship, are capable of affecting each 
other. This higher unity lies (1) in God, (2) in man, and 
(3) in the purpose for which the life of grace, and conse- 
quently the special knowledge, comes forward. In God, 
because the principium of natural, as well as of special, 
knowledge lies in Him ; because He remains the object of 
both kinds of knowledge ; and because the revelation of 
His grace is revelation of grace in Him who created natu- 
ral life for the glory of His name. Secondl}^, in man, since 
it is the same ego that draws knowledge from both prin- 
cipia ; since in this ego it is one and the same consciousness 
in which this knowledge of God is taken up ; and since it 
is no other kind of man, but the very man who fell, who 
as sinner needs the knowledge of this grace. And, finally, 
in the purpose of the special knowledge, which consists not 
in a cutting off of our natural life, but in the restoration 
of that same life, which is ours by nature, into a normal 
state guaranteed against a new fall. Special revelation 
does not begin, therefore, by ignoring what has already 
been effected by natural revelation, but unites itself to this 
in so positive a sense, that without these sparks (scintillae) 
or remnants (rudera) it were itself unthinkable ; and for 
this reason Reformed Theology has ever resisted the Lutheran 
representation as though the sinner were merely "a stock 
or block." If the " seed of religion " did not operate in the 
sinner, he would not be susceptible to special revelation. 



/ 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL PRINCIFIUM 377 

Whatever still remains in the sinner of this seed of religion 
and the knowledge of God connected with this, is, therefore, 
adopted by special revelation, as the indispensable instru- 
ment by which it operates. Without this, it neither reaches 
nor touches man, remains an abstraction, and misses its form 
of existence. How can there be a sense of sin without the 
sense of God, or susceptibility for grace without the con- 
sciousness of guilt ? The Holy Bible is, therefore, neither 
a law-book nor a catechism, but the documentation of a 
part of human life^ and in that human life of a divine pro- 
cess. Of the Apocalyptic vision only, it can be said that 
it misses this quality in part ; but because of this very 
antithesis with the Apocalypse, one perceives at once the 
real human character of all the other parts of the revelation- 
life. Nowhere in the Scriptures do you find, therefore, an 
attempt to divide into certain compartments what is severally 
supplied by natural and special knowledge ; but, throughout, 
you find the special revelation grafted upon the natural. 
Natural knowledge is not only assumed by the special, but 
only in this does it fully assert itself. Knowledge is the 
pinnacle which is not placed on the ground alongside of 
the steeple, but is supported by the body of the steeple and is 
lifted up on high. You may not say, therefore : This is my 
natural revelation, in addition to which comes the special. 
For as a result, you obtain but one "knowledge of God," the 
content of which has flowed to you from hotli sources, whose 
waters have mingled themselves. 

And if for this reason an exhibition of the special knowl- 
edge without the natural is inconceivable, the representation 
is equally absurd that the natural knowledge of God, without 
enrichment by the special^ could ever effect a satisfying 
result. The outcome has shown that this natural knowl- 
edge, as soon as it threw off the bridle of paradise tradition, 
led the masses to idolatry and brutalization, and the finer 
minds to false philosophies and equally false morals. Paul 
indicates one of these two phases by the remark, that there 
was first a condition in which the natural knowledge of God 
allowed " that which may be known of God " (Rom. i. 19) to 



378 § 70. RELATION BETWEEN THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

be manifest, but that this was followed by the period in which 
God gave the sinner up (irapehcDKe). Not to speak now of 
that first period, it is clear that at least after that the natural 
knowledge of God could lead to no result ; not even in phi- 
losophy, of which the same apostle testifies that the " wisdom 
of the world is made foolish " (1 Cor. i. 20). Hence it is only 
by the special knowledge that the natural knowledge be- 
comes serviceable. By the light of the Scripture the sinner 
becomes able to give himself an account of the " seed of re- 
ligion" in his heart and of the " divine things " visible in the 
cosmos ; but, where this light hides itself even upon the 
Areopagus I advance no farther than to the Unknown God. 
If therefore this entire juxtaposition, as though a special 
knowledge of God stood side by side with a natural knowledge 
of God, falls away, the way is cleared thereby to view more 
accurately the relation between the two principia of this 
knowledge thus distinguished. Both principia are one in 
God, and the beam of this light is only broken when the 
soundness of our human heart is broken by sin. The 
knowledge-bringing impulse goes out from God to us ; the 
active element, the first mover (primum movens), as the ulti- 
mate cause (principium remotissimum), lies in the Divine 
Being. This impulse of self-communication to man attains 
its end completely in creation by the whole instrumentation 
for the natural knowledge. And where, after sin, this Divine 
impulse encounters an evil cataract, which prevents the 
entrance of light, this impulse seeks and finds another and 
more sure way by special revelation. Hence it is the same 
God, and in that God the same impulse, by which both prin- 
cipia appear in action. That in the origin of all things, or, 
more particularly, in God's eternal counsel, both these stood 
in this unity before God, cannot detain us here, since this 
belongs to the domain of dogmatics ; but here it must be 
indicated that the natural principium lays the foundation 
of all knowledge, and that the special principium either fails 
of its purpose or must adapt itself entirely to the provisions 
that are original in the creation. Even the miracles, whose 
character cannot be considered closely here, link no new ele- 



Chap. II] AND THE NATURAL riilNCIPIUM 379 

ment into the sum of things, but, so far as their origin is con- 
cerned, they are entirely identical with the wondrous power 
which became manifest in the creation itself. The same is 
true of the several means, which God has employed, to intro- 
duce the special revelation into our human consciousness. 
In the interests of this also you see no new or other capaci- 
ties appear in man ; but merely the application in a peculiar 
manner of what was given in the creation. Before the fall 
God speaks with Adam, God causes a deep sleep to come 
upon Adam, and, by an encroaching act of God, Eve enters 
upon existence. God has entrance to our heart by nature, 
and not first by grace ; He is able to rule the human spirit 
b}^ His Spirit ; and able to communicate to man what He 
will. The communication of the test-commandment is an 
immediate communication of a conscious thought, which 
could not rise from Adam's own consciousness. Actually, 
therefore, in special revelation no single means is used which 
was not already present by nature in or about man. ^ No 
new structure is provided for human consciousness. All 
that has taken place is, that God the Lord has restored a few 
broken strings of the instrument, tuned these restored strings 
in a different way, and by this immediate modification He has 
evoked such a tone from the instrument as, being without 
significance to sinless man, had become indispensable to the 
sinner. Hence there would have been no question of a second 
principium, if there were not this act of God, by which 
He has accommodated Himself to the sinner. It is with 
this, as it is with you, when for the sake of making yourself 
understood by a member of the family who has become deaf, 
3'ou no longer choose his ear as a vehicle for your thoughts, 
but make him read with his eyes the words from your lips. 
Thus, when we became deaf to God, He has employed a dif-^ 
f event means by which to make Himself knowable to us ; and 
in so far as with a deaf person the hearing of sound and the- 
reading of lips might be called a different ''principium of 
knowledge," there is here also the mention of such different 
principles, but only in so far. There has gone out an act from 
God to reveal Himself to the sinner, however deaf this one 



380 § 71. IS THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM ABLE [Div. Ill 

had become ; for this God has availed Himself of the means 
that were present in the creation, but which were now applied 
in a different way ; and it is by this abnormal act of God, 
brought about by the modified application of present means, 
that special revelation was established ; and in this, i.e. 
in this abnormal act of God, brought about by means applied 
in a different way, lies the special principium for the knowl- 
edge of God as All-Merciful to sinners. When croup pre- 
vents the breathing in of air, the heroic operation in the 
throat is sometimes undertaken, in order in this way to 
obtain a new opening for the supply of fresh air; but 
they are still the same lungs for which the air is intended, 
and it is the same atmosphere from which the air is drawn ; 
only another entrance has been unlocked temporarily^ and in 
so far a different principium of respiration has been estab- 
lished. In this sense it can be said, that the normal en- 
trance, which in creation God had unlocked for Himself to 
our heart, had become inaccessible by sin, and that for this 
reason, by an act of heroic grace, God has temporarily opened 
for Himself another entrance to our heart, to reveal Himself 
as the same God to the same creature, only now with the aid 
of a different principium of revelation. 

In God, who is and always will be Himself the principium 
of all being (essentia) and all knowing (cognitio), nothing 
else is conceivable than the unity of principium. But when 
from His eternal being our becoming is born, there is majesty 
in this eternal being to maintain His divine identity over 
against every abnormal process in our becoming ; and this 
takes place by the appearance of the special principium, 
which actually is nothing else but the maintenance of God's 
holiness over against our sin, of God's truth over against 
our falsehood, and of God's counsel over against the demo- 
niacal design of Satan. 

§ 71. Is the Natural Principium able to summon the Special 
Principium before its Tribunal? 

Having freed ourselves, in the preceding section, of all 
dualism, which is so often inserted between the two principia 



Chap. II] TO JUDGE THE SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM ? 381 

of Divine knowledge, we now face the no less important 
question, whether the natural principium, either formally or 
materially, is to sit in judgment upon the special principium. 
This is the frequent claim. They who oppose us, and do 
not recognize another principium alongside of the natural 
data, continually demand, that we demonstrate the reality 
and the reliability of the special principium at the bar of 
human reason. And to a certain extent this demand is fair, 
at least over against Methodism, and, in fact, over against 
every dualistic tendency, which, in the sense we disapprove, 
places special revelation as a new unit alongside of the 
natural principium, as though the latter were under sen- 
tence of death, and the special principium could furnish the 
guarantee of eternal permanency. Over against every rep- 
resentation of this character our conviction remains dominant 
that our life, as originally given in the Creation, is the sub- 
stratum of our real existence ; that as such it is and remains 
for us the real ; and that, therefore, whatever special revela- 
tion may supply, must be taken up into this and, for us 
personally, can only thus obtain its reality. From this, 
however, it does not follow that the natural principium 
should be qualified to judge the special revelation. If 
special revelation assumes that in consequence of sin the 
normal activity of the natural principium is disturbed, this 
implies of itself that the natural principium has lost its 
competency to judge. He who considers it possessed of 
this competency declares thereby eo ipso that it is still 
normal, and thus removes all sufficient reason for a special 
revelation. You must either deny it the right of judgment, 
or, if you grant it this right, the object disappears upon 
which judgment shall be passed. The psychiater, who treats 
the maniac, cannot render his method of treatment dependent 
upon the judgment of his patient. Equally little can you 
attribute this right of judgment over the special principium 
to the natural principium, if you consider the character of a 
principium. As soon as you grant that special revelation 
falls under the judgment of your natural principium, it is 
hereby denied eo ipso that it has proceeded from a prin- 



382 § 71. IS THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM ABLE [Div. Ill 

cipium of its own. No other judgment except death un- 
qualified ("la mort sans phrase") is here possible for the 
special principium, simply because a judgment, derived from 
the natural principium deeming itself normal, cannot posit 
a second principium. A principium in its own sphere is 
exclusive. In order to subject the principium of theology 
to the judgment of another principium, you must first con- 
fess that it is no real principium. For a thing is either no 
principium, or it must be autonomous and sufficient unto 
itself. 

This is of the more force, in this instance, insomuch as 
the natural principium, taking its stand in judgment over 
against us, presents itself as unimpaired, and pretends to be 
normal. If it recognized the reality of another principium, 
it would at the same time imply the confession, that it itself 
has become disabled, and is consequently in need of the cor- 
rective or of the supplement of another principium. Hence 
this question also has a moral side. If self-knowledge, quick- 
ened by the inshining of a higher light, leads to the recog- 
nition that the natural principium has become imperfect, 
then it is most natural (1) to grant the necessity of a 
corrective principium, and at the same time (2) to recog- 
nize that our darkened natural principium is incompetent 
to pass judgment. If, on the other hand, I stand in the 
high-spirited conviction that the natural principium is in 
good order, that nothing is wanting in it, and that conse- 
quently it has the right of supremacy, then it follows that 
every corrective must seem insulting, upon all of which alike 
I must pass the sentence of death, and that I cannot rest 
until each corrective lies executed under the dissecting knife 
of criticism. The outcome, indeed, has shown that this 
standpoint has never been taken and maintained with any 
degree of consistency, without the whole of special revelation 
being always and inexorably declared to be the product of 
delusion or of self-deception. Grace has been granted only 
to those component parts of this revelation which allowed 
themselves to be brought over to the natural principium. 
Every effort to defend the good right of your position is 



I 

Chap. II] TO JUDGE THE SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM? 383 

therefore entirely vain, over against a man of thought, who 
holds the natural principium to be unimpaired, and who has 
not himself come under the overwhelming power of the special 
principium. Being as he is, he can do nothing else than dis- 
pute your special revelation every right of existence; to move 
him to a different judgment you should not reason with him, 
but change him in his consciousness ; and since this is the 
fruit of regeneration, it does not lie with you, but with God. 

From this, again, it does not follow that you may now 
accept everything that comes into your mind, and that thus 
you may be unreasonable with yourself. Reformed Theology 
has always antagonized this caprice, and in imitation of the 
Cur Deus homo f of Anselm it has, with reference also to 
special revelation, first of all instituted an investigation into 
the necessitas Sacrae Scripturae, He who, thanks to the in- 
shining of higher light, has perceived the darkening of the 
natural principium, and has given himself captive to the 
special principium, cannot on this account abandon his rea- 
son, but is bound to try to understand these two facts in 
their mutual relation and in relation to the reality in which 
he finds himself. This is both demanded and rendered 
possible by what we found in the last section concerning the 
relation of the special principium to our creaturely capaci- 
ties ; even in the sense, that one is able to see for himself 
the reasonableness of his conviction and confession ; is able 
to prove this to those who start out from similar premises ; 
and can place them before the opponent in such a light that, 
with the assumption of our premises, he can accept our con- 
clusions. 

The argument may even then be continued concerning 
those premises themselves, more particularly with reference 
to the question, whether our reason is in a condition of 
soundness or of darkening ; but suppose that the unsound- 
ness or abnormality of our reason be granted on both sides, 
this would by no means compel the opponent to accept the 
special principium which we defend. From the coincidence 
of the facts, that one of your children is lost and that I have 
found a lost child, it does not in the least follow, that the 



/ 

384 §71. IS THE NATURAL PRINCIPIUM ABLE [Div. Ill 

child I have found is your child. Even though it were 
frankly granted that something is lacking in our reason, 
that our reason by itself is insufficient, — yes, that it calls 
for a complement, — the conclusion can never be logically 
drawn from this that the Sacra Scrip tura, or, better still, the 
special principium lying back of this, either is or offers this 
complement. Even though you compel the opponent to 
recognize, that your special principium fits into the imper- 
fection of your natural principium as a piece of china into a 
broken dish, this would not prove the reality of this natural 
principium. For it could still be answered, that the defect 
would surely be supplemented, if indeed a revelation, such 
as you pretend, were at our disposal ; but that this is the 
very thing in which you are mistaken ; that your special 
principium, with its supposed fruit in the Sacra Scriptura, 
is nothing but the shadow cast upon the wall by the existing 
defect ; is the product of your own imagination ; the minus 
balance of your account changed into plus. In a word, there 
would always be defence ready against the proof that this 
special principium is real, and this proof is not possible of 
any principium. Could this be furnished, it would eo ipso 
cease to be a principium. 

But this will not be reached. For though you succeed 
in showing that your reason founders upon antinomies, 
that it finds itself shut up within limits which cannot be 
made to agree with the impulse after knowledge that works 
in it, and that it leaves the higher aspirations of our nature 
unsatisfied, this has no compelling force with him who has 
an interest in not accepting your special principium. For he 
can make good his escape by the way of agnosticism, which 
accepts the incomplete character of our knowledge as an 
iron necessity ; or make the side-leap to the pantheistic 
process, which calculates that from the incomplete the com- 
plete of itself will gradually come forth. Moreover, though 
he evade you in this manner, you may not question the 
honesty of your opponent. From your own point of view 
you acknowledge that he who stands outside of spiritual 
illumination does not perceive, and cannot perceive, the real 



Chap. IIJ TO JUDGE THE SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM? 385 

condition of his own being, nor of his reason. In a religious- 
ethical sense you may indeed say, that the impulse of his 
opposition is enmity against God ; but this does not make 
him dishonest as a man of science, within the domain of 
logic. He takes his premises, as they actually present them- 
selves to him, and so far acknowledges with you, that in the 
natural principium there is something that does not satisfy 
us ; but he disputes that, for the present at least, it needs to 
satisfy us, and more still, that the satisfaction, of which you 
boast, is anything more than appearance. 

Hence the dispute can advance no farther than the acknowl- 
edgment of antinomies in our consciousness and the insuf- 
ficiency of our reason to satisfy entirely our thirst after 
knowledge. But where the recognition of this leads you 
to the conclusion of the necessity of the Sacred Scripture^ 
the rationalist either stops with the recognition of this 
disharmony, or glides over into other theories, which allow 
him to limit himself to the natural principium. And 
rather than call in the aid of another principium with you, 
he will cast himself into the arms of materialism, which 
releases him at once from the search after an infinite world, 
Avhich then does not exist. All the trouble, therefore, that 
men have given themselves to make advance, by logical 
argument, from the acknowledgment of the insufficiency of 
our reason as a starting-point, has been a vain expenditure 
of strength. The so-called Doctrine of Principles (Princi- 
pienlehre) may have served to strengthen in his conviction 
one who has confessed the special principium ; and to shield 
prevailing tradition from passing too rapidly into oblivion ; 
it has never provided force of proof against the opponent. 
He who is not born of water and the Spirit, cannot see the 
kingdom of God, and the human mind is sufficiently invent- 
ive so to modify its tactics, whenever you imagine that you 
have gained your point, that your proof is bound to lose its 
force. It is a little different, of course, when you touch the 
strings of the emotions, or appeal to the "seed of religion" ; 
but then you enter upon another domain, and cease to draw 
conclusions from logical premises. 



386 §71. IS THE NATUBAL PKINCIPIUM ABLE [Div. ni 

The same is true in part of the apologetic attempt to re- 
fute objections raised against the content of our Christian con- 
fession, and more particularly against the Holy Scripture as 
the principium of theology. Polemics will never be able to 
attain satisfactory results with reference to these points, 
simply because the spheres of conceptions and convictions, 
from which the argument proceeds on the two sides, are too 
widely apart : the result of which is that scarcely a single 
concrete point can be broached, which does not involve the 
whole subject of anthropology and the entire " Erkenntniss- 
theorie." In order, therefore, to make any gain, the general 
data that present themselves with such a concrete point should 
first be settled, one by one, before the real point in question 
can be handled. This makes every debate of that sort 
constrained. Scarcely has a single step been ventured in 
the way of such a controversy before it is felt on both 
sides that the acknowledgment of a different opinion on 
this one point would unsettle one's entire life- and world- 
view. If the naturalist grants the break of the chain of 
natural causes in one point, by acknowledging that a psychic 
or physical miracle has taken place, his entire system is over- 
thrown ; and, in like manner, if the Christian theologian 
acknowledges in one cardinal point the assertions of his- 
torical criticism with reference to the Holy Scripture, he 
thereby loses his grasp upon the whole principium by which 
his theology lives. By this we do not assert that, with 
reference to the Holy Scripture, there are not many re- 
marks that have been made on logical incongruities, either 
in the economy of the Scripture itself, or between it and 
cosmic and historic reality outside of it, which, unless our 
confession is to lose its reasonable character, claim an answer 
from our side ; but though these remarks might compel us 
to make confession in our turn of a partial agnosticism, or 
to subject the dogma of inspiration to revision, to us the 
special principium will never lose thereby its characteristic 
supremacy ; just as on the other hand the most triumphant 
solution of the objections raised against it never could, and 
never can move him, who does not confess this principium, to 



y 



V 

<-/> 



Chap. II] TO JUDGE THE SPECIAL PIIINCIPIUM ? 387 

accept it. The acceptance of this principium in the end 
cannot rest upon anything save the witness of the Holy 
Spirit^ even as the acceptance of the natural principium has 
never rested upon anything save the witness of our spirit^ 
i.e. of our self -consciousness. If this testimonium of our 
self-consciousness fails us, then we become sceptics or insane ; 
and, in like manner, if the witness of the Holy Spirit is not 
present in us, or is at least inactive in us, we cannot reckon 
with a special principium. 

The effort, therefore, put forth by theology in the days 
of the Reformation to derive from the Scripture itself proofs 
for its divine character, is devoid of all force with the 
opponent. Not because of the objection, that you reason 
in a circle, by seeking from the Scripture itself what the 
Scripture is. Our earlier theologians answered this cor- 
rectly by saying, that this argument was not meant authori- 
tative^ but ratio cinativ e ; that the glitter of the sapphire 
could only be proven by the sapphire ; and that in like 
manner the divine majesty of the Holy Scripture could only 
shine out from that Scripture. But however accurate this 
statement was, what avail is it, if you show the most beauti- 
ful sapphire to one blind, or to one of " that worst kind of 
blind people who refuse to see " ? One needs, therefore, 
but examine the series of these proofs for a moment, and it 
is at once perceived how utterly devoid of force they are 
over against him who merely accepts the natural principium. 
The miracles and the fulfilment of prophecy, indeed, have 
been pointed to, as if these had some power of proof for him 
who denies the very possibility of miracle and emasculates 
all concretely fulfilled prophecy as being "prophecy after 
the event" (vaticinium ex eventu). The divine character 
of the Doctrina Scripturae was cited, as though criticism had 
not already then been exercised against it, and, as it was 
claimed, its insufficiency been shown. The majestic style 
of the Scriptures was referred to, the consensus of its books, 
the effectiveness of its entire content, as though even then 
the arms were not already being v/elded by which each of 
these attributes of the Scripture would be disputed, or 



388 §71. IS 1.^. NATUBAL PRINCIPIUM ABLE [Div. Ill 

attributed to it only in common with other writings. And 
when outside of the Scripture the blood of the martyrs was 
mentioned, the consensus of the Church, and the " natural 
and human character (conditio) of the writers themselves," 
arguments were produced which were so easily applied to 
other sacred books that all their force evaporated. What- 
ever may be the worth of these arguments for those who are 
within the walls (intra muros) to combat doubt, outside of 
these walls (ad extra) they are of no value. Our acutest 
dialectici, such as Maccovius for instance, have clearly seen 
this in their day. His reference to Hagar in the wilderness 
shows this. " Hagar," he writes, " at first did not see the 
well near by ; but after her eyes were opened, then at last 
she saw the well " (antea non vidit puteum in proximo ; 
sed postquam oculi ipsi adaperti sunt, tum demum vidit 
puteum) (Joh. Maccov. 11., Theologia. quaestionum, p. 4 in 
Mace, redivivus, Franeq, 1654), — an analogy by which he 
tries to show, that the marks of its divine origin are truly in 
the Scripture ; but that no one can see them as long as the 
veil still hangs before his eyes. This is only taken away by 
the " enlightening " " by which the Holy Spirit discovers to 
us those inner relations of the Scripture, which had hitherto 
been concealed " (quo ostendit Spiritus Sanctus eas rationes 
Scrip turae insitas, quae antea ei occultae erant) (^Ibidem). 

Hence our conclusion can be no other, than that whosoever 
confesses the Holy Scripture to be the principium of theology, 
both for himself and his fellow-confessors must certainly be 
able to give an account of the way in which this auxiliary 
principium is related to the permanent natural principium, 
in order that his confession may remain rational ; but that 
this ratiocination can neither for himself be the ground on 
which his confession stands, nor ever compel the opponent 
to come to this confession. The witness of the Holy Spirit 
is and ever will be the only power which can carry into 
our consciousness the certainty concerning the special prin- 
cipium. Moreover, in the footsteps of our old theologians, 
it must be observed that it is also the witness of God as 
Creator (Testimonium Dei Creatoris) that can alone give us 



/ 



Chap. II] TO JUDGE THE SPECIAL FRINCLPIUM ? 389 

certainty for the natural principium. When God refrains 
from giving this certainty to our self-consciousness, we 
lapse into insanity, generally after the course has been run 
of the several stadii of scepticism. It is indeed true, that 
with respect to this natural principium, as a rule, we make 
no mention of the " witness of God as Creator," but this is 
explained from the fact, that it coincides with our self -con- 
sciousness, and that further account of the origin of this 
self-consciousness is rarely taken. It is simply the first truth 
from which departure is made. The special principium, on 
the other hand, enters into this self -consciousness as a sense 
of a different kind, and is thereby of itself reduced to its 
deeper origin in God. But however strongly this may 
appear with men of higher development, who, after they 
have lived for a long time by the natural principium only, 
now perceive the light in their consciousness from that other 
source as well, this is much less the case, and sometimes not 
at all, with common believers, who, regenerated in their 
youth, have never experienced this transition in their con- 
sciousness. In the case of such, immediate faith has been 
given equally naturally and as fully with their self-con- 
sciousness, as immediate knoivledge for the natural principium 
is given with the awakening of our natural self-consciousness. 
For man as creature there can never be any other principium 
of knowledge but his Creator, naturaliter, as well as by the 
way of grace. What the Psalmist declares, only '*in thy 
light shall we see light," remains the absolute ground of 
explanation for all human knowledge. 

§ 72. Universality of this Principium 

One who, himself of a sound mind, should have to live on 
some isolated island among insane people, would run a great 
risk of becoming himself insane ; and in such a condition a 
very strong mind only could maintain the reality of its con- 
sciousness. Just because we do not exist atomically, but 
are bound together with others organically, also in our 
consciousness, in order to remain firm our own sense cannot 
afford to lose the support of a similar sense in others. The 



390 § 72. UNIVEKSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

same applies to the special principium. With this also, as a 
rule, the communion in our own consciousness can be strong 
and permanent only when this communion finds a support 
in the similar conviction of others. This rule, however, 
does not always hold. As one sane person, because of a 
strong mind, might be able in entire isolation to maintain 
his self -consciousness, it is possible for one person to experi- 
ence the inworking of the special principium, and live by it, 
even though in his entire surroundings there should operate 
nothing but the natural principium. At first, indeed, this had 
to be so, in order that the working of this special principium 
might become manifest. It could not begin its work except 
in single persons. As a rule those individuals were men of 
strong minds, and to support their isolated faith the Lord 
gave them signs, mostly in the material world, which kept 
them from falling away from the power which had taken 
hold of them. Heroism of spirit is here called into play. 
When Christ, forsaken of all, even of His disciples, battled 
alone in Gethsemane, this struggle in loneliness became so 
fearful, that angels came to break His isolation, in order to 
support Him. So long, then, as revelation is still in process 
of completion, we see again and again the manifestation of 
extraordinary powers, by which the maintenance of faith is 
rendered possible, and these signs only disappear when Reve- 
lation has reached its completion, and the special principium 
finds a circle, in which faith can assume such a communal 
character, that the conviction of one supports that of the 
other. 

If thus, like the natural principium, the working of the 
special principium requires a broad circle in which to exert 
itself organically, this circle becomes still more indispensable 
when a scientific account is given of what this special prin- 
cipium is and offers. Science demands universality. Not 
in the sense, of course, that nothing is established scientifi- 
cally in the natural world until every individual has agreed 
to it, but in the sense that all men of sound understanding 
can readily be brought to perceive the truth of it. The 
same applies to the special principium. The law of univer- 



\ 



Chap. 11] §72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 391 

sality must prevail here also, and must always be well 
understood by those who live by this principium. These 
only are taken into account, just as in natural science we 
reckon with those alone who are men of sound sense, i.e. 
who live by the natural principium. All these^ then, must 
be able, if they follow your demonstration, to perceive the 
correctness of it. This accounts for the fact that in later 
ages only the question arose of a science of theology. Be- 
fore that time there was theology as knowledge of God; 
even measurably in a dogmatic sense; but as yet no theologi- 
cal science. This could only originate when the Revelation 
was completed, and liberated from the restrictions peculiar 
to Israel. Then there arose that universal circle among all 
nations, that circle of confessors in their general human 
character, who live by this special principium. 

This communal character, which, along with every other 
principium, is common to the special principium, received 
no sufficient recognition in the conflict of the Reformation. 
From our side, the line of personal faith was ever drawn too 
tightly ; while Rome, from her side, substituted the institu- 
tional Church too largely for the organic communion. Each 
of the two parties defended thereby an element of truth, but 
it was done by both in an insufficient and one-sided manner. 
Very properly did our Reformers maintain the personal char- 
acter of faith, which does not reach its full unfolding, until 
it places our inner life in direct communion with the Eternal 
Being ; but they lost sight of the fact that this is the fullest 
development of the faith, not its beginning, and that in its 
maturity it cannot flourish as it should, except in the 
communion of saints. Rome, on the other hand, defended 
very rightly the common feature, which marks faith, but 
committed a double mistake, — first, that it did not allow 
the personal character of faith to assert itself, and made it 
amount to nothing more than communion with God through 
the intermediation of the Church, and secondly, that it sub- 
stituted the ecclesiastical institution for organic communion. 
This might, perhaps, have been more clearly seen if in their 
dogmatic exposition our Reformers had added, at once. 



392 § 72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

to their distinction between the Church as a visible body 
and at the same time invisible, the more careful distinction 
between the visible Church as composed of believers (eccle- 
sia visibilis in fidelibus) and the visible church as an insti- 
tution (ecclesia visibilis in instituto). They did this, indeed, 
in their ecclesiastical law ; observing thereby that the Church 
of Christ may be visible in a city or village, because of the 
believers who live there, even while no Church organization 
is established by these believers, and that the ecclesia instituta 
only originates by this organization. But in their dogmatics 
they referred almost exclusively to the general antithesis 
between visible and invisible, and thereby could not fail to 
convey the impression, that by visible Church they merely 
understood the Church as an institution. Since Rome out- 
did this, and wholly identified the visible Church with the 
Church as an institution, the problem could not be solved ; 
since the Church as an institution was certainly subjected to 
the rule of the Word of God ; and therefore our Reformers 
observed correctly, that the institute must borrow its guar- 
antee from the Scripture, and not the Scripture its proof 
from the institute. Transfer this difference to the life of 
the world, and it will at once be understood. In society at 
large the natural principium is in force and the institute is 
the government, which, to be sure, is in the community, but 
is ever sharply distinguished from it. Can the assertion now 
be made that the truth of this natural principium is to be 
determined by the State ? Of course not ; simply because 
the State, so far as it is constituted by man, is an outcome 
of the natural principium. Undoubtedly, therefore, this 
natural principium can support the State, but not lean upon 
the State. On the other hand, by general conceptions, and 
public opinion derived from these, this natural principium 
finds its point of support in human society. And this is the 
case here. The Church is to the special principium what the 
State is to the natural principium. The Church as an insti- 
tute, founded by man, is built after the rule of the special 
principium, as this speaks to us from the Holy Scripture. 
Hence the churchly institute can borrow support from the 



Chap. II] § 72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIFIUM 393 

special principium, but not the special principium from the 
churchly institute. But what is true on the other hand — 
and this is the position which we defend — is, that faith in 
this special principium is supported and maintained by the 
churchly community, i.e. by the wow-instituted but organi- 
cally present communion mutual among believers. 

It is unhistorical, therefore, to imagine that every person, 
taking the Bible in hand from his own impulse, should for- 
mulate the truth from it for himself. This is simply absurd, 
for actual experience shows that one either grows up in, or 
in later life enters, a circle in which confessions of the truth 
already exist ; and that, in vital communion with this circle, 
clearness is reached in his consciousness of what was poten- 
tially given in regeneration, but which only from this com- 
munion can draw the life-sap needed for its development. 
As one tree of the forest protects another against the vio- 
lence of the storm, so in the communion of saints does one 
protect the other against the storm- wind of doubt. 

This fellowship of believers, carefully distinguished from 
instituted Churches, exhibits its universal human character 
in the fact that it continues its life in successive generations 
and extends itself to all peoples and nations. So far as the 
first is concerned, it has a history back of it which extends 
across many centuries, and by its confession it ever preserves 
communion with the past. Not merely in the sense in which 
a nation holds its ancestors in sacred memory, for in national 
life the dead are gone. He who dies loses his nationality, 
and belongs no more to his people. This fellowship of be- 
lievers, on the other hand, knows that its departed ancestors 
still live and always stand in organic connection with it. 
Moreover, while a people changes its public opinion from 
age to age, in this ecclesiastical fellowship the same world of 
thought remains constant for all time. Hence the tie to the 
special principium is not maintained by those alone who are 
now alive with us and subscribe to the same confession as 
ourselves, but much more by those millions upon millions 
who now rejoice before the throne. And so far as the second 
is concerned, the outcome shows that the Christian religion, 



39-i § 72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

originating in Asia, passed over from the Semitic to the 
Indo-Germanic race, presently conquered the Northern Coast 
of Africa and the entire south of Europe, and never allowed 
itself to be nationalized. Christ had humanized his confes- 
sion, by breaking down every partition wall Qtxeaoroi'xpv)', 
and this universal human character stands in immediate con- 
nection with the possession of a special principium of knowl- 
edge. That which is national may give tradition, but cannot 
provide a special principium for our consciousness. It is 
seen, therefore, that every effort, applied outside of this 
principium, has merely led to national forms of religion ; 
and even Buddhism — which, by the chameleon character 
of its pantheism, lent itself to stealthy invasions among 
many nations — remains in principle, nevertheless, an Indian 
world of thought. Islam alone — and this is worthy of 
notice — still exhibits, to a certain extent, an cecumenic char- 
acter, which is attributable to the fact that Mohammedanism 
is grafted upon the special principium, such as it flourished, 
thanks to the Scripture, in the Christian life-circle. Even 
thus Islam has never taken root in the finer branches of the 
human tree. Islam is and remains Arabic, and outside of 
Arabia has gained an entrance only among those nations, 
which either have taken no part in the general human de- 
velopment, or have stood at a much lower level. Even the 
accession of Persia to Islam is attended with the disappear- 
ance of this nation, once so great, from the world stage. 

If thus we leave out of account for a moment the working 
of this special principium before Golgotha, we face the fact 
that for almost twenty centuries a separate human life has 
developed itself in our human race ; principally in the nobler 
branches of the human tree and among the more finely organ- 
ized nations; and that the development of this separate life 
has not taken place with isolated nations such as China and 
India, but even now in five parts of the world, and chiefly 
in that current of our human life which has carried the 
hegemony, and caused the development of our human race 
to ascend to its present heights. We see that this separate 
life has been characterized everywhere by the action, in 



Chap. II] § 72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM 395 

addition to that of the natural principium, of another princip- 
iiim of knowledge, and that wherever the Christian religion 
has withdrawn, as in West- Asia and North-Africa, all human 
life has sunk back again to a much lower level. We see 
that in this broad life-circle, which has extended itself across 
many ages and among many people, there has arisen a special 
world of thought ; modified universal conceptions have begun 
to prevail ; and in this genuinely human circle the human 
consciousness has assumed an entirely peculiar form. In this 
way have originated that universal life and that universal 
thought, which have certainly clashed with the other circle, 
that rejected the special principium, but which have pos- 
sessed, nevertheless, entirely sufficient consistency to invite 
and to render possible scientific construction upon the foun- 
dation of that principle which, in this circle, is universal. 
It will not do, therefore, to represent this special principium 
as an idiosyncrasy of a few enthusiasts. The melancholy 
decline of all mystic fanaticism shows what the profound 
difference is between the parasite, that springs from fanatic 
imagination, and the cedar, that has struck its roots in the 
fertile soil of this real principle. This special principium 
is as universally human as the natural "principium, with this 
difference only, that it is not given to each individual, but 
is organically grafted upon the tree of humanity. The life- 
circle, indeed, which finds its centrum in Christ as the bearer 
of the new life-principle, is not a branch of our race that 
is set apart ; but this body of Christ is the real trunk of our 
human roxe^ and what is not incorporated into this body, falls 
away from that trunk as a useless branch. He is, and re- 
mains, the second Adam. 

Moreover, the peoples and nations that have stood or still 
stand outside of this life-circle, involuntarily bear witness 
to the insufficiency of the natural principium in its present 
working. When in Deut. xviii. inspiration is announced 
by God as the peculiar working of the special principium. 
He says : '^ I will raise them up a prophet from among their 
brethren, like unto thee ; and I will put my words in his 
mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall com- 



o 



96 § 72. UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 



mand him." An important thought, however, precedes the 
announcement of this rich inspiration, which in all its full- 
ness is given in Christ as "Prophet." In the tenth verse, 
reference is made to divination and necromancy, which were 
common among the nations, and toward which Israel be- 
trayed strong tendencies ; and now they are told that the 
satisfaction of the need which spoke in this desire was not 
to be sought in the way of this enchantment, but that God 
alone is able to grant them the aspirations of their hearts. 
This impulse after necromancy, taken in its deepest signifi- 
cance, can be no other than the desire to find, in addition to 
the natural principium, another principium of knowledge for 
all those profound questions of life upon which the natural 
principium can cast no light. From this it appears, that the 
insufficiency of the natural principium declares itself in the 
universal human sense, so long as this still expresses itself in 
an unconstrained and natural way. The appearance, there- 
fore, of another principium of knowledge in the Christian 
religion does not enter the present state of things as some- 
thing foreign, but fits on it as a new spire upon a steeple, the 
former spire of which has fallen into ruin. We grant that 
afterwards, in philosophy, the natural principium has tried to 
show the superfluousness of such an auxiliary -principium. 
However, we must not fail to observe that these efforts of 
the philosophic spirit, so long as they were religiously colored, 
never occasioned in the religious world anything but endless 
confusion of speech; that they have never resulted in the 
founding of a religious life-circle of universal significance; 
and that these systems, drawn from the natural principium, 
have more and more abandoned eternal concerns in order in 
materialism to deny their existence, or in agnosticism to 
postulate the special principium. It is noteworthy, there- 
fore, that since the apostasy, which began in the latter part 
of the last century, a broad life-circle has been formed in 
Europe and America, which has abandoned the special prin- 
cipium, in order, in Spiritualism, to revive the ancient effort 
after necromancy. This Spiritualism now counts its fol- 
lowers by the millions, and its main desire is to obtain an 



Chap. II] § 73. THIS PRINCIPIUM AND HOLY SCRIPTURE 397 

answer to the questions which force themselves upon our 
human mind, in another way than that which comes from 
the natural principium. While in other circles, where this 
Spiritualism has gained no entrance, the effort is certainly 
manifest, to obtain knowledge from the mysticism of the 
emotions, of what " common sense " has left uncertain. 
Every philosophical tendency, which, for the sake of defend- 
ing itself against intellectualism, seeks another source of 
knowledge, pleads at heart for the necessity of a special 
principium. Pure intellectualists alone maintain to this 
day the sufficiency of the principium of rational knowledge; 
and this is even in opposition to Kant, who, in his "prac- 
tische Vernunft," placed a second something dualistically 
over against the "reine Vernunft." But the barrenness of 
such intellectualism is sufficiently evident. 

We refuse, therefore, to allow the charge, that the special 
principium, as an invention of fanaticism, floats like a drop 
of oil upon the waters of our human life, and we maintain, 
on the contrary, that the need of such an auxiliary principium 
is universally human; that in its organic working this prin- 
cipium bears an universally human character ; and that in the 
final result towards which it directs itself, it has an universally 
human significance. 

§ 73. This Principium and the Holy Scripture 

That the sphere of the special principium is wider than 
the compass of the Holy Scripture, needs no separate dem- 
onstration. Even though you firmly maintain that here you 
deal with a principium of knowing, it is here as impossible 
as elsewhere to ignore the principium of being (essendi). 
It is for this reason that in special revelation also fact and 
word run parallel and stand in connection with each other. 
There is not simply an inspiration that kindles light in our 
consciousness, but there is also a manifestation in miracles 
which operates upon the reality of being ; and both flow 
naturally from that same principium in God, by which He 
works re-creatively in His deranged creation. The repre- 
sentation as though a way of life could have been disclosed 



398 § 73. THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. m 

for us by a book descended from heaven or by a Bible 
dictated from heaven, rests upon an intellectualistic abstrac- 
tion, which interprets altogether incorrectly the relation 
between being and thought^ between fact and word. If it is 
entirely true, that God created by speaking, so that the 
creatural being originated by the word^ it must not be for- 
gotten that this word went out from Him who carries the 
TO esse in Himself. In the creation therefore there is no 
question of an abstract word, but of a word that carries in 
itself the full reality of life ; and that the Scripture-word 
does not meet this requirement, appears from the fact, that 
without concomitants it is inert, even as the most glittering 
diamond without inshining light and admiring eyes differs 
in no particular from a dull piece of carbon. Protest there- 
fore has ever been entered from the side of the Reformed 
against Luther's effort to place Word and Sacrament on a 
line, as though an active power lay concealed in the Script- 
ure as such. Even though Luther's representation of an 
" eingepredigter " Christ allows defence to a certain extent, 
the Bible, as book, may never be accredited with a kind of 
sacramental power. By itself the Bible is nothing but a 
carrier and vehicle, or, if you please, the instrument pre- 
pared by God, by which to attain His spiritual purpose, but 
always through the ever-present working of the Holy Spirit. 
If thus we take the sphere of action which belongs to 
this special principium in its entire compass, we find that it 
embraces everything that has taken place from the side of 
God, either immediately or mediately, and that has not pro- 
ceeded from the natural principium, i.e. the whole plan of 
redemption ; everything that has tended to realize this plan ; 
all the special leadings, signs, and wonders; and in this 
connection the entire inspiration and the formation of the 
Scripture ; and also all palingenesis, all illumination, all 
revelation of the Church of Christ ; while from this same 
principium there shall yet come forth the palingenesis of 
heaven and earth, until the kingdom of glory is begun. 
The Bible, therefore, instead of being identical with this 
principium so far as its activity is concerned, is itself a 



Chap, n] AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 399 

product of this activity. Neither can it be said, that the 
Bible at least is identical with the fruit of the principium 
of knowledge, as such, for this also invites two objections : 
First, that many histories are contained in the Bible, so that 
it resembles in nothing a text- or law-book ; and secondly, 
that this principium of knowing (cognoscendi) has produced 
by no means the Scripture only, but from it proceeds even 
now the working of the Holy Ghost, which maintains, applies 
and vitalizes the knowledge of God, partly by illumination 
in the consciousness of individuals, and partly by the work 
of the sacred ministry. 

To understand the just relation between this special prin- 
cipium in God and the Holy Scripture, a more accurate 
definition is demanded, and this is only obtained by a double 
distinction. First, by the distinction between that which 
concerns our race as an organic unit and the knowledge of 
God in the single individual ; and secondly, by the distinc- 
tion between the content of the material of our knowledge 
and the way in which our knowledge takes this material up 
into itself. Both these distinctions demand a brief explana- 
tion. The Romish dogmaticians very properly observed, that 
the Holy Scripture could not be the instrument of salvation 
in the absolute sense, for the reason that many centuries 
elapsed before it was completed, and that there were never- 
theless not a few who in the meantime, and without Script- 
ure, were saved. This admits no rejoinder. It is simply 
true. But this objection loses its force at once, when we 
consider the great mystery. In Rom. xvi. 25 ; in Ephes. 
i. 9, iii. 9 ; Col. i. 26 ; 1 Tim. iii. 9 ; Tit. i. 2 ; and 1 Pet. 
i. 20, this mystery is referred to again and again as the 
key which unlocks for us insight into the course of reve- 
lation. This involves no secondary point, but a main point, 
and this main point, as we read in Col. i. 26, amounts 
to this : that there is the " mystery which hath been hid 
from all ages and generations," which eighteen centuries 
ago has been revealed to the saints of God, "to whom God 
was pleased to make known what is the riches of the 
glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ 



400 § 73. THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

in you, the hope of glorj^" By this falls away every con- 
ception as though revelation after the fall had progressed 
aphoristically or atomistically ; and we get the conception 
of a revelation which goes through its definite stages, and 
thus moves along towards its final goal ; which goal has 
been reached only when the whole earth unlocks itself for 
the reception of this revelation, and this directs itself, not 
to single persons, nor yet to a single nation, but to our 
human race as a whole. If thus lesser or greater parts of 
the Holy Scripture, and finally even the whole Old Testa- 
ment, may have rendered provisional service in Israel, the 
Holy Scripture as such obtains its full significance only 
when special grace directs itself to our race as an organic 
whole and causes the Catholic Church to appear in humanity. 
The holy apostle Paul expresses this most pertinently, 
when of the Old Testament he declares in Rom. xv. 4, 
" For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written 
for our learning"; a thought which he repeats in 1 Cor. 
ix. 10 and in 1 Cor. x. 11, and in the latter especially 
emphasizes very strongly. There he does not only say that 
" all these things are written for our admonition,^^ but even 
prefaces this by saying that all these things happened unto 
Israel, "by way of example,''^ Entirely apart therefore 
from the question, how God saved individual persons in 
the times when the revelation had not yet been placed 
in the centrum of our human race, the fact must be held 
fast, that the Holy Scripture was intended to discharge 
its full task from that moment only when our race, taken 
as a whole, in its heart and centre, was apprehended 
with a view to salvation. Only when the saving hand 
was extended to the cosmos, and God " so loved the world 
that He gave His only begotten Son," had the moment 
come, when the Holy Scripture also would attain its en- 
tirely exceptional significance. All that lies back of this is 
merely preparation, and now for the first time, when in Christ 
the divine esse has been brought into our race, in the Holy 
Scripture also the divine word goes out not to one nation, 
but to all nations, and to those nations as an organic unity, 



Chap. II] AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 401 

as cosmos. All true understanding of the significance of 
the Holy Scripture is lost, therefore, when this important 
incision in the course of revelation is lost from view. He 
who does not understand, that even as the Christ, the Holy 
Scripture also is given to the world, cannot tolerate it. It 
is the one Logos which in Christ by incarnation, and in the 
Scripture by inscripturation goes out to humanity at large, 
as it is being saved by God and shall hereafter shine in 
glory. If thus the question is put what goes out to our 
human race as such from the special principium as matter of 
Divine knowledge, the answer reads : The Scripture and 
nothing but the Scripture ; and in this sense the Scripture 
is identical in its working with the principium. 

The second distinction, referred to above, between the 
material of the knowledge of God which is imparted to 
us and the way in which that material becomes our own, is 
no less important. After the unveiling of the mystery, indi- 
cated by the former distinction, it lies in the nature of the 
case that the individual obtains no part in this salvation 
except as member of the organic whole. Noah, Moses and 
Samuel received separate revelations, simply because human- 
ity as such did not yet possess its revelation. But when 
once humanity as a whole had received its revelation, and this 
was completed, the need for all separate revelation fell away ; 
and all mysticism, which even after this still pretends to 
receive separate personal revelation, frustrates thereby the 
organic ministration of the Lord. He who has lived, lives, 
or shall live, after our race in its unity has received its 
Christ and its Scripture, has no other way at his disposal, 
by which to come to the knowledge of God, except in union 
with this central revelation; and in so far as the life-stream 
of the Christ propels itself in the Church, and the Scripture 
is borne by her as "the pillar and ground of the truth," the 
Church of Christ (provided it be not taken as institute) is 
the only means of salvation. There is no salvation outside 
of her. But however firmly the organic relation both of our 
race and of revelation must be maintained, it is not asserted 
that the Holy Scripture by itself is enough for the individual. 



402 § 73. THIS PRINCIPIUM [Div. lU 

This is not the case at all, and he who thinks that the Holy- 
Spirit really gave the Scripture, but now leaves its appropria- 
tion to our natural reason, is wofully mistaken. On the con- 
trary, the Holy Spirit, who gave the Scriptures, is Himself 
the perpetual author (auctor perpetuus) of all appropria- 
tion of their contents hy and of all application to the indi- 
vidual. It is the Holy Spirit who, by illumination, enables 
the human consciousness to take up into itself the sub- 
stance of the Scripture; in the course of ages leads our 
human consciousness to ever richer insights into its con- 
tent; and who, while this process continues, imparts to the 
elect of God, as they reach the years of discretion, that 
personal application of the Word, which, after the Divine 
counsel, is both intended and indispensable for them. Only, 
however many-sided and incisive this constant working of 
the Holy Spirit may be, it brings no new content (and 
herein lies the nerve of this second distinction), no in- 
creased supply of material, no enlargement of the substance 
of the knowledge of God. A believer of the nineteenth 
century knows much more than a believer of the tenth or 
third century could know, but that additional knowledge is 
ever dug from the selfsame gold mine ; and that former gen- 
erations stood behind in wealth of knowledge, can only be 
explained by the fact, that in those times the working of the 
mine was not so far advanced. This, of course, does not 
imply that the former generations fell short in knowledge 
of God, but simply, that the development of the human con- 
sciousness in those times did not make such demands on our 
knowledge of God. A child can be equally rich in his God 
as the full-grown man, but because the consciousness of the 
adult is more richly unfolded, he holds the knowledge of God 
likewise in a more richly unfolded form. With the fuller 
development of the consciousness of humanity the increase 
of insight into the contents of the Scriptures keeps equal 
step. But however far this increase of knowledge may 
proceed in the future, it will never be able to draw its mate- 
rial from any other source than from the Holy Scripture. 
And it is for this reason, that for the several nations also, 



Chap. II] AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 403 

and for the individuals among these nations, the rule re- 
mains valid that the substance of the knowledge of God, 
which comes to us from the special principium, is identical 
with the Holy Scripture. 

This would not be so if the Holy Scripture were merely a 
collection of inspired utterances concerning the Being of 
God, His attributes. His will and counsel of grace. Then 
indeed, by the side of the realm of the Scripture there 
would also lie the realm of facts^ both of the leadings of the 
Lord and of His miracles, and the knowledge of these facts 
could only come to us by tradition. But this is not the 
character of the Holy Scripture ; and it is to be deplored 
that the Methodistic tendency in particular has degraded 
it so much to such a volume of inspired utterances. The 
Holy Scripture offers us a photograph of the entire sphere 
of life, in which the action of God from the special prin- 
cipium has appeared, with His activity out of the natural 
principium as its natural and indispensable background. 
The logical revelation, which directs itself immediately to 
our consciousness, does not stand independently by the side of 
this photograph, neither is it woven through it, but belongs 
to it, and constitutes a part of it. More than or anything else 
than this photograph could not be offered us, simply because 
facts that lie in the past cannot be alive except in the 
memory or in the imagination. For though there is also 
a real after-effect of past events in the actual conditions in 
which we live, which is, moreover, the no less real activity 
which uninterruptedly goes forth from Christ out of heaven 
upon His Church, yet the presentation of this double, real 
activity and correct insight into it is possible only by a 
thorough study of the photograph offered us in the Holy 
Scripture. Not as though we would deny that the rich 
past, which lies back of the completion of the Holy Script- 
ures, does contain an innumerable multitude of facts which 
you do not find in this photograph, but for this the answer 
from John xx. 30 is ever conclusive : that many other signs 
therefore did Jesus, but these are written, that ye may be- 
lieve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God ; and that 



404 § 73. THIS PRINCIPIUM AND HOLY SCRIPTURE [Div. Ill 

believing ye may have life in His name. Not a hundredth 
part of course is told us of what happened or was spoken 
in former times, but here also there was light and shadow, 
there was perspective, and even as you take the fruit from 
the tree, but not the leaves which presently wither, so also 
the ripened fruit of Revelation is offered us in the Holy 
Scripture, while all that aided that fruit to ripen has disap- 
peared in the shade and sunk away in forgetfulness. This 
is incomprehensible to him who thinks that the Scripture 
originated by way of accident, but agrees entirely with the 
nature of the case for him who believes that the origin of 
the Scripture was determined and foreseen in the counsel 
of God, and that the distinction between the fruit that was 
to be plucked and the leaf that was to wither was given in 
the facts themselves in keeping with this purpose of the 
Holy* Scripture. Hence the reason that we reject tradition, 
in which Rome seeks a complement for the Holy Scripture, 
is not because we deny that there is an abundance of mate- 
rial for a very interesting tradition, nor yet alone because 
we foster a just doubt concerning the reliability of this 
tradition, but rather because such a complement by tradition 
is antagonistic to the entire conception of the Scripture. In 
that case the Holy Scripture would attain no higher value 
than of being itself a part of tradition. Then it no longer 
would form a completed whole, an organic unity. Suppose 
that after a while letters were to be found of Thomas or of 
Philip, or a gospel according to Andrew, you would be bound 
to let these parts be added to your Bible. The Bible would 
then become an incomplete, contingent fragment of a whole, 
and would need to postulate its complement from elsewhere ; 
and so the theologic, and therefore the organic and teleologic, 
view of the Holy Scripture would pass away in the historic- 
accidental. Since this view is in direct conflict with the 
view given concerning the Old Testament in Rom. xv. 4, 
etc., upon Scriptural ground this preposterous view of the 
Holy Scripture may not be tolerated for a single moment, 
but the confession must be maintained that so far as the , 
substance of the knowledge of God is concerned, which is 



Chap. II] § 74. SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM AND WRITTEN WORD 405 

given to humanity as such, the Holy Bible itself is the proxi- 
mate and sole cause (principium proximum et unicum) for 
our knowledge of God. 

§ 74. The Sjpecial Principium and the Written Word 

The indispensableness of the Holy Scripture, therefore, 
rests : (1) upon the necessity that a special principium 
should be actively introduced, inasmuch as the working of 
the natural principium is weakened or broken ; and (2) upon 
the necessity that this special principium should not direct 
itself atomistically to the individual, but organically to the 
human race. From these two considerations it follows that 
an auxiliary-principium is needed, and that a revelation must 
be given to humanity as such (i.e. to) /cocr/xo)) ; but it does 
not follow directly from this that "this special Word of 
God to the world " should assume the form of the written 
word. It is necessary, therefore, that we inquire into the 
peculiar character of the written word, and ask ourselves 
why the special Revelation of God to the world needed thi% 
form. 

To this we reply with emphasis, that in comparison with 
the spoken word the written word is entitled to claim the 
four characteristics of durability^ catholicity^ fixedness and 
purity^ — four attributes, the first two of which impart some- 
thing of the Divine stamp to our human word, and the last 
two of which form a corrective against the imperfection of 
our sinful condition. 

Writing by itself is nothing but an auxiliary. If the 
power of our memory were not limited, and if our capacity 
for communication were universal, the need of writing would 
never have been known. The sense of shortness of memory 
and our limited ability of communicating our thoughts per- 
sonally, strengthened by the need of guarding that which has 
been spoken or agreed upon from being misrepresented, has, 
through a series of gradations, called into life, first, pic- 
tographic writing, then idiographic writing, then phono- 
graphic writing, after that syllabic writing, and finally, 
alphabetic writing. Hence writing bears almost entirely a 



406 § 74. THE SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM [Div. m 

conventional and arbitrary character. Only as pure idio- 
graphs did it escape from the conventional, and then only upon 
the condition of being delineation instead of writing. Writ- 
ing, in the real sense of the word, tries to photograph the 
somatic part of our human language, in order that by see- 
ing these photographed signs one person may understand 
psychically what has gone on psychically in another person, 
or has gone out from his lips. Writing tries to do the same 
thing that the phonograph does, but by attaching a meaning, 
not to sound, but to root-forms. When we have our picture 
taken, it is our own face that, with the aid of the light, 
draws its counterfeit upon the collodion plate. If, now, it 
were possible for our human voice to delineate itself imme- 
diately in all its inflexions upon paper, we should have abso- 
lute and organic writing. Since, however, thus far this is 
not possible, we must content ourselves with conventional 
writing, which is not produced by the voice itself, but by our 
thinking mind. It is our thinking mind which watches the 
sound and the inflexion of the voice in connection with the 
movement of the visible organs of speech, and now indi- 
cates either the voice-action itself or the content of that 
voice-action, by signs, in such a way that when another 
person sees these signs he is able to reproduce that same in- 
flexion of voice and impart to it the same content. The 
question whether, with a sinless development, writing would 
have run the same course cannot possibly be answered ; but 
it is evident that then also something similar would have 
taken its place. For then also memory would have been 
limited in its power, and the need of communication would 
have originated with the sense of distance. Only for the 
realm of glory the question can arise whether, in that exalted 
state of the life of our spirits, and with its finer organisms, 
all such auxiliaries will not fall away. By itself, therefore, 
it cannot be said that writing is a need which has only come 
as a consequence of sin ; even though it is certain, as will 
appear from the last two of the four characteristics mentioned 
above, that the need of writing has been intensified in every 
way by sin. 



Chap. II] AND THE WRITTEN WORD 407 

With reference to the first of these characteristics, it is 
readily seen, that writing first of all relieves the spoken word 
of its transitoriness. " The word that is heard passes away, 
the letter that is written remains." (Verba volant, littera 
scripta manet.) Our voice creates words, but lacks the ability 
to hold them fast. One word drives the other on. The spoken 
word, therefore, bears the character of the transitory and 
the changeable, which are the marks of our mortality. It 
comes in order to go, and lacks the ability to maintain itself. 
It is a irdvTa pel /cal ovSev /jbevei (everything flows and noth- 
ing remains) in the most mournful sense. And even when, 
by the phonograph, it is secured that the flowing word con- 
geals and is presently liquefied, it gives us at most a repeti- 
tion of what was spoken or sung, and no more. But this 
very imperfection is met by the mighty invention of human 
writing. By writing, in its present state of perfection, the 
word or thought spoken is lifted above transitoriness. It is 
taken out of the stream of time and cast upon the shore, 
there to take on a stable form, and after many ages to do the 
same service still which it performed immediately upon its 
first appearing. The corresjjondence, which is discovered 
by a fellah in a forgotten nook of Egypt and presents us 
with the interchange of thought between the then Eastern 
princes and the court of Egypt, speaks now as accurately as 
three thousand years ago ; and if, after the fall into sin, the 
bitter emotions of his soul could have been written down by 
Adam, our hearts could sympathize to the last minutiae with 
what went on in Adam so many thousand years ago. Writ- 
ing, indeed, is human thought set free from the process of 
time. By writing, human thought approaches the eternal, 
the enduring, and, to a certain extent, impresses upon it- 
self a Divine stamp. It is noteworthy, therefore, how in 
the Holy Scripture the durability and permanence of the 
thoughts of God are expressed by the figure of the Book of 
Life, the Book of the Seven Seals, etc. Nor is this all. 
Not only, thanks to writing, does human thought approach 
in a measure the eternal, but also by writing only, on the 
other hand, does it meet the demand raised by the unity of 



408 § 74. THE SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

our human race. The whole human race does not live upon 
the earth at once. It appears on earth in a succession of 
generations, one of which comes and the other passes away. 
If the means, therefore, are wanting to perpetuate the 
thought of one generation for the others, then thinking be- 
comes aphoristic, and the unity of the human consciousness 
in our whole race is not established. Tradition might lend 
some aid so long as those thoughts are few and bear a little- 
complicated character, and the restricted form of poetry 
might offer assistance so long as those thoughts preferred 
the form of images ; but in the course of centuries no 
question of unity for our human consciousness could have 
been permanent, if Aristotle had had to entrust his word 
to memory, or Plato his thesaurus of ideas to memoriter 
poetry. Thus, writing alone has created the possibility of 
collecting human thought, of congealing it, of handing it 
down from age to age, and of maintaining the unity of our 
human consciousness in the continuity of the generations. 
If, now, the special revelation from God is not destined for 
the one generation to which a certain part of the revelation 
w^as given, but for the wo7'ld, and hence for the generations 
of all ages until the end is come, it is evident that it was 
necessary for this special revelation to take the form of writ- 
ing. Only by this written form could it be a revelation to 
our race as a whole. 

In connection with this stands the second characteristic 
which we mentioned; viz. writing is catholic, i.e. universal, in 
the sense that, bound by neither place nor nation it overcomes 
the limitation of the local. Even the most stentorian voice 
does not carry a single spoken word beyond the distance of 
one kilometer, and a more extended expression of thought 
cannot reach across one-tenth part of this ; but so soon as 
the word has been committed to writing, no distance can 
resist or break its power. The written word travels around 
the world. He who speaks, may communicate his thoughts 
to ten thousand persons at most ; he who writes, to ten mil- 
lions and more. In the mystery of writing lies, thus, the 
wonderful power of overcoming at the same time the two 



Chap. II] AND THE WRITTEN WORD 409 

mighty limitations of our human existence, those of time 
and place. An important statement by Gladstone, spoken 
in the English Parliament after sundown, is printed before 
the sun rises again, and in a million copies spread among the 
masses, in Europe and America. Dislocation, no less than 
time^ is a mighty factor that resists the unit-life of our race. 
In olden times, when this dislocation was not modified in its 
fatal effects by quicker means of communication, the sense of 
the sodality of the nations, and in connection with this the 
idea of a common humanity, were in consequence very little 
alive; and it is only by these quickened means of communica- 
tion, which greatly augment the effect of the written word, 
that now a feeling of international communion has mastered 
the nations, and a sense of organic unity permeates all the 
articulations of our human race. If now, as was shown 
before, the mystery of Revelation consists in this : that our 
race, even as it was created of one blood, shall sometime 
shine in the realm of glory as one body under Christ as 
its head, then it needs no further proof that this catholic 
characteristic of writing agrees entirely with the catholic 
character of the whole Revelation and the catholic character 
of the Church. As writing sets thought free from every 
local restriction, special Revelation in like manner, released 
from all local and national restrictions, seeks the human 
race in the whole world as one organic whole. God has 
loved not individuals nor nations, but the luorld. Only 
by writing, therefore, can special Revelation attain its end ; 
and in proportion as the development of human conscious- 
ness has made higher demands, printing and afterward more 
rapid communication have augmented this dispersing power 
of writing. Writing, therefore, is the means of perpetuating 
thought and at the same time of dispersing it, i.e. of making 
it universal in the highest sense, and of bringing it within the 
reach of all. Writing lends wings to thought. It neutralizes 
distance of time and place, and thereby puts upon thought 
the stamp of the eternity and of omnipresence. So far as 
human thought can formally approach the divine, it owes to 
writing alone this higher nobility. For this reason, there- 



410 § 74. THE SPECIAL PEINCIPIUM [Div. Ill 

fore, when divine thoughts take pleasure in the garment of 
human words, the Scripture is the only form in which they 
can rest. 

But this does not exhibit in full the excellency of the 
Scripture as such, and therefore we mentioned the two other 
characteristics of fixedness and purity^ which protect the 
word of thought against the dangers that threaten from the 
results of sin. With respect to tradition we have to con- 
tend not merely with the limitation of the human memory, 
hj which so much becomes lost, broken, and impaired, but 
almost more still with its multiformity and untrustworthiness ; 
and it is against these two dangers that the spoken word is 
shielded in the fixedness and accuracy of the written or 
printed word. 

Every religious sense from its very nature is in need of 
fixedness. As long as the divine reflects itself only in the 
changing stream of the human, it fails to take hold of us, 
simply because this trait of changeableness and movability is 
in conflict with the idea of the divinely majestic. The quod 
uhique, quod semper may have been pushed too far by Rome, 
on the ground of hierarchical by -views, but in the realm of 
religion antiquity is of so much more value than the new and 
constantly changing idea, simply because the old makes the 
impression of fixedness and of being grounded in itself. So 
far now as the sinful mind of man chafes against the divine 
revelation, he will always be bound to break this fixedness. 
Hence the injurious multiformity in tradition. A little lib- 
erty, which each successive transmitter allows himself, brings 
it to pass that in the course of two or three centuries tradi- 
tion is wrenched entirely away from the grooves of its fixed- 
ness. This may occur unconsciously or without ill intent, 
but in every case it breaks the working power of the trans- 
mitted revelation. This is seen in the unwritten tradition, 
which from paradise spread among all nations, becoming 
almost irrecognizable ; this is seen in the traditions committed 
to writing at a later date in the apocryphal gospels ; this is 
seen in the different authority of tradition in the Eastern and 
Western churches. It is this same infatuation against the 



Chap. II] AND THE WRITTEN 'vVORD 411 

fixedness of the truth, which now appears again in the oppo- 
sition against every confessional tie, and no less in the loud 
protest against the written character of revelation, and this 
in a time which otherwise emphasizes so strongly the written 
for the entire Cultur. On the other hand, it is seen in the 
holy books, which every more highly developed form of 
religion has created for itself, in India, China, among the 
Persians and Islam, etc., how the pious sense which, from 
the ever changing, seeks after a basis of fixedness, applies 
writing, as soon as found, as a means of resistance against 
the destructive power of what is individual and multiform 
in tradition. What Paul wrote to the church at Phil. iii. 16, 
"whereunto we have already attained, by that same rule let 
us walk," is unchangeably the fundamental trait of all re- 
ligion, w^hich does not end in individual wisdom or fanati- 
cism, but organically works in upon our human life as such. 
And since writing only, and in a more telling sense, the 
press, is able to guarantee to the Divine thoughts which are 
revealed to us that fixed form, it is not by chance, but of 
necessity, that special Revelation did not come to us by way 
of oral tradition, but in the form of tJie Scripture. 

This brings with it the purity, which likewise can be guar- 
anteed by writing only, among sinful men, and this onl}^ in a 
limited sense. Since Divine revelation directs itself against 
the mind and inclination of the sinner, sinful tendency could 
not be wanting, to represent that revelation differently from 
what it was given. Not merely did forgetfulness and indi- 
vidualism threaten the purity of tradition, but the direct 
effort also wilfully to modify what was revealed according to 
one's own idea and need; which psychologically is done the 
sooner, if one knows the revelation only from tradition, and 
thus thinks himself entitled to mistrust its certainty. One 
begins by asking whether the revelation might not have been 
different, and ends in the belief that it was different. If 
printing in its present completeness had been in existence 
from the times of the beginning of revelation, it would have 
been the surest safeguard against such falsification. If what 
was spoken at the time had been taken down by stenography 



412 § 74. SPECIAL PRINCIPIUM AND WRITTEN WORD [Div. Ill 

and been circulated at once in thousands of copies by the 
press, we would have been so much more certain than now 
of the authenticity of what is handed down. Since, however, 
printing, as a strengthened form of writing, did not exist 
at that time, handwriting alone could guard against falsifica- 
tion. And though we must grant that this safeguard is far 
from being absolute, yet it is certain that the written tradition 
has a preference above the oral, which defies all comparison, 
and thus, in order to come down to us in the least possibly 
falsified form, the Divine revelation had to be written. 

To him who thinks that the Revelation came from God, 
but that the writing was invented by man, the relation 
between that Revelation and its written form is of course 
purely accidental. He, on the other hand, who understands 
and confesses that writing indeed is a human invention, but 
one which God has thought out for us and in His own time 
has caused us to find, will arrive at the same conclusion with 
ourselves, that also in His high counsel the Divine revelation 
is adapted to writing, and writing to the revelation. We 
do not hesitate to assert that human writing has reached 
its highest destiny in the Scripture, even as the art of print- 
ing can attain no higher end than to spread the Word of 
God among all peoples and nations, and among those nations 
to put it within the reach of every individual. To this still 
another and no less important spiritual benefit attaches it- 
self, in so far as printing (and writing in part) liberates men 
from men and binds them to God. So long as the revela- 
tion is handed down by oral tradition only, the great mul- 
titude was and ever remained dependent upon a priestly order 
or hierarchy to impart to them the knowledge of this revela- 
tion. Hence there ever stood a man between us and God. 
For which reason it is entirely natural that the Roman hier- 
archy opposes rather than favors the spread of the printed 
Bible. And it behooves us, in the very opposite sense, to 
confess, that the Divine revelation, in order to reach immedi- 
ately those who were called to life, had to assume the form 
of writing, and that only by printed writing could it enter 
upon its fullest mission of power. 



Chai>. II] § 75. INSPIRATION 413 

§ 75. Inspiration. Its Relation to the Principium Essendi 

If Ave have not failed entirely in our endeavor to appre- 
hend the special principium in its full significance, and if 
thereby we intend to maintain the confession of the theology 
of the sixteenth century, that the only principium of theol- 
ogy is the Holy Scripture, the question now arises, — by what 
action the Holy Scripture came forth from this principium 
in such a way that at length the principium and the product 
of this principium (i.e. the Holy Scripture) could be inter- 
changed. Theologically taken, this action lies in inspiration^ 
and therefore in this section we proceed to the study of this 
majestic act of God, to which we owe the Holy Scripture. 
It is not enough for Encyclopedia to declare apodictically 
that the Holy Bible is the principium of theology. Such a 
declaration is sufficient, when one writes an Encyclopedia of 
a science whose principium is self-evident. A medical Ency- 
clopedia does not need to give an account in the first place 
of the fact that pathological conditions appear in the human 
body, nor of the fact that in nature there are reagents against 
these conditions. But for theological Encyclopedia the mat- 
ter stands differently. It has to investigate a matter as its 
object, whose principium is not given normally in the crea- 
tion, but has abnormally entered into what was created. 
The right understanding, therefore, of this science demands 
an explanation of this principium, its action and its product, 
in their mutual connection. This principium is the energy 
in God by which, notwithstanding the ruin worked in the 
cosmos by sin, He carries out His will with reference to that 
cosmos ; and more properly as a principium of hnoivledge it 
is that energy in God, by which He introduces His theodicy 
into the human consciousness of the sinner. The product of 
this principium, which is placed objectively before the human 
consciousness, is the Holy Scripture. And finally the action 
by which this product comes forth from this Divine energy 
is inspiration. Hence this inspiration also must be explained. 

It should, however, not be lost from view, that this inspi- 
ration is no isolated fact, which stands by itself. He who 



414 § 75. INSPIRATION. ITS RELATION [Div. Ill 

takes it in this sense arrives at some sort of Koran, but not 
at the Holy Scripture. In that case the principium of 
knowing (cognoscendi) is taken entirely apart from the 
principium of being (essendi), and causes the appearance 
of an exclusively intellectual product which is outside of 
reality. We then would have an inspiration which dic- 
tated intellectually, and could not communicate to us any- 
thing but a doctrine and a law. Entirely different, on the 
other hand, is the action of this Divine energy, which, 
in spite of sin, carries out the plan of the Lord in and by 
the cosmos. Since indeed sin is not merely intellectual 
in its character, but has corrupted the whole nature of man 
and brought the curse and disorder even upon nature out- 
side of man, this Divine energy could not overcome the 
opposition of sin, except it directed itself to the whole 
reality of our human existence, including nature round 
about us. Hence this Divine energy constitutes in part 
(see § 67) the principium essendi, and from it comes miracle, 
— not miracle taken as an isolated phenomenon, which ap- 
pears without causal connection with the existing world ; 
but miracle, as the overcoming, penetrating working of the 
Divine energy, by which God breaks all opposition, and in 
the face of disorder brings His cosmos to realize that end 
which was determined upon in His counsel. It is from 
the deeper basis of God's will, on which the whole cosmos 
rests, that this mysterious power works in the cosmos; breaks 
the bands of sin and disorder, which hold the cosmos in their 
embrace ; and centrally from man so influences the entire 
life of the cosmos, that at length it must realize the glory 
intended for it by God, in order in that glory to render unto 
God what was the end of the entire creation of the cos- 
mos. Every interpretation of the miracle as a magical 
incident without connection with the palingenesis of the 
whole cosmos, which Jesus refers to in Matt. xix. 28, and 
therefore without relation to the entire metamorphosis which 
awaits the cosmos after the last judgment, does not enhance 
the glory of God, but debases the Recreator of heaven and 
earth to a juggler (707y9). This entire recreative action of 



Chap. II] TO THE PRINCIPIU.M ESSENDI 415 

the Divine energy is one continuous miracle, which shows 
itself in the radical renewal of the life of man by regenera- 
tion, in the radical renewal of the life of humanity by the 
new Head which it receives in Christ, and which finally 
shall bring to pass a similar radical renewal of life in nature. 
And because these three do not run loosely side by side, but 
are bound together organically, so that the mystery of regener- 
ation, incarnation and of the final restitution forms one whole, 
this wondrous energy of re-creation exhibits itself in a 
broad history^ in which what used to be interpreted as inci- 
dental miracles, could not be wanting. Because our soul is 
organically connected with our hody^ and this body unites us 
organically to nature, a palingenesis, wdiich should limit itself 
to the psychic domain, without at the same time working an 
effect upon the body and upon the cosmos, is simply unthink- 
able. The fuller explanation of this belongs from the nature 
of the case to dogmatics. Here it is sufficient that the atten- 
tion is directed to the significance, which the recreative 
Divine energy, also in so far as it appears as the principium of 
being (essendi), has for the life of our consciousness, and there- 
fore for the principium of knowing (cognoscendi). The tie 
that binds thought to being and being to thought operates 
also here. There is not a revelation by the dictation of a 
doctrine and law, and by its side a revelation by what is 
called miracle ; but the revelation in the world of reality and 
the revelation in the world of thought are interwoven. The 
thought explains the reality (as, for instance, prophecy the 
Messiah), and again from the reality the thought receives its 
content (for instance, in the gospels). The preparation of 
the consciousness for the thought (illuminatio) proceeds 
from the reality of the palingenesis, and again in faith (as the 
act of the consciousness) the reality of the new life finds its 
utterance. In a like sense inspiration does not lie isolated 
by the side of the Divine energy in history, but is organically 
united to it and forms a part of it. If in the meantime it is 
demanded, that theology as science indicate its principium, 
it has to deal from the nature of the case as such with the 
principium of knowing only, and cannot reckon with the 



416 §75. INSPIRATION. ITS RELATION [Div. Ill 

reality, and therefore with the principium of heing^ except 
so far as the facts and events have been transformed before- 
hand into a thought^ i.e. have become a narrative. It is in 
the glass oi our human consciousness that reality reflects its 
image ; by the human word this image becomes fixed ; and it 
is from this word that the image of the reality is called up in 
the individual consciousness of him who hears or reads this 
word. A reality., such as the recreative Divine energy has 
woven through the past as a golden thread, was not intended 
only for the few persons who were then alive, and whom it 
affected by an immediate impression, but was of central and 
permanent significance to humanity. It could not be satis- 
fied with simply having happened; it only effected its purpose 
when, transformed into an idea, it obtained permanence, and 
even as the Divine word^ that accompanied it, and in the unity 
which joined this word to the facts of history, it could be 
extended from generation to generation. If now our human 
consciousness had stood above these facts and these Divine 
utterances, the common communication by human tradition 
would have been enough. But since our human conscious- 
ness stood beneath them, and, left to itself, was bound to mis- 
understand them, and was thus incapable of interpreting the 
correct sense of them, it was necessary for the Divine energy 
to provide not only these facts and utterances, but also the 
image of this reality so as to insure re-creation likewise in the 
world of our consciousness. This provision was brought 
about by the Divine energy from the special principium in 
inspiration in a twofold way : (1) by means of the word in 
the past transforming the Divine doing into thought^ and thus 
introducing it into the consciousness of those who were then 
alive ; and (2) by bringing to us this entire past, together with 
these Divine utterances, as one rich idea, in the Holy Scripture. 
Thus inspiration is not added to this wondrous working 
of the Divine energy, but flows, and is inseparable, from it. 
It does not come from the principium of creation, but from 
that of re-creation. Though, indeed, it finds an analogy in 
the communion of paradisiacal man with his Creator, and its 
connecting-point in the capacity of paradisiacal man for that 



Chap. II] TO THE FKINCIPIUM ESSENDI 417 

communion, inspiration, in the narrower sense, may never be 
confounded with this communion. Inspiration, as it here 
appears, is not the working of the general " consciousness of 
the divinity'' (Gottesbewusstsein). It does not rise from 
the seed of religion. It may not be confounded with the 
utterance of the mystically disposed mind. Neither may it 
be placed on a line of equality with the way in which God 
will reveal Himself to the blessed in the realm of glory. 
Appearing as an abnormal factor in the work of re-creation, 
it bears a specific character, belongs to the category of the 
miraculous, and is consequently of a transient nature. As 
soon as the object for which it appears has been attained, it 
loses its reason for being, and ceases to exist. Though it 
must be granted that the illumination, and very much more, 
was indispensable, in order that the fruit of inspiration might 
ripen to the full ; yea, though from everything it appears that 
the Holy Spirit ever continues to this day more fully to ex- 
plain the rich content of the fruit of inspiration in the con- 
fession of believers and in the development of theology ; yet 
in principle all these operations of the Spirit are to be dis- 
tinguished from inspiration in its proper sense. In the coun- 
sel of God before the creation of the world, there was a 
provision for the carrying out of His plan concerning the 
cosmos, in spite of the outbreak of sin. In that counsel of 
God, all things were predestined in organic relation, which 
to this end were to be done by the Divine energy, and this, 
indeed, severally : on the one hand, what was to be done 
centrally in and for our entire race, and, on the other hand, 
what was to be done in order that this central means might 
realize its purpose with the individual elect. Inspiration 
directs itself to this central means ; the individual is left to 
illumination. This central means is to be taken in this 
threefold way : First, as an idea in Divine completeness^ lyhig 
predestined in the counsel of God ; secondly, as from that 
counsel it entered into the reality of this cosmos and w^as 
ever more fully executed ; and thirdly, as it was offered to 
the human consciousness, as tradition under the Divine 
guarantee, and by inspiration as the human idea. 



418 § 75. INSPIRATION, ITS RELATION [Div. Ill 

Hence the thought, that it comes to an end, is not foreign, 
but lies in the nature of inspiration. This is not arbitrary, but 
flows from the fact that our human race forms an organism, 
and that, therefore, here, as with all organisms, distinction 
must be made between that which centrally directs itself to all 
and that which individually limits itself to single persons. 
And if this distinction is noted, then it follows from this 
with equal force, that that which centrally goes out to all 
must appear in that objective form in which it could continue 
from age to age and spread from nation to nation. That 
which is individual in its character may remain subjective- 
mystic in its form, but not that which is intended to be 
centrally of force for all times and nations. In order to 
exist objectively for all, this revelation of necessity had to 
be completed. As long as it was not finished, it missed its 
objective character, since it still remained attached to the 
persons and the life -sphere in which it had its rise. Only 
when it is completed, does it become independent of those 
persons and of that special life-circle, and obtain its absolute 
character. An ever-continuous inspiration is therefore only 
conceivable, when one mistakenly understands by it mystical 
inworking upon the individual, and thus takes the work of 
re-creation atomistically. Then, however, inspiration fails of 
all specific character and loses itself in the general " est Deus 
in nobis, agitante calescimus illo (Lo, God is in our soul, 
we kindle when He stirs us); " while re-creation is then 
imagined as coming from phantasy, and is no longer suitable 
for humanity, which only exists organically. In all organic 
development there are two periods, — the first, which brings 
the organism to its measure or limit, and the second, which 
allows it, once come to its measure, to do its functional work. 
The plant, animal and man first grow, till the state of matu- 
rity has been reached, and then that growth ceases. An or- 
ganic action which restlessly continues in the same way, is a 
contradiction in terms. Considered, therefore, from this 
point of view, it lies entirely in the organic character of 
revelation, that it passes through two periods, the first of 
which brings it to its complete measure, and the second 



Chap. II] TO THE PRINCH^IUM ESSENDI 419 

of which allows it, having reached its measure, to perform 
its work. xVnd this is what we face in the difference between 
inspiration and illumination. Inspiration completed the reve- 
lation, and, appearing in this completed form, the Revelation 
now performs its work. 

This first period (that in which Revelation attained its 
measure by inspiration, and which lasted so many centuries) 
does not flow by itself from the principium of knowledge. 
If you think that revelation consisted merely in a communi- 
cation by inspiration of doctrine and law, nothing would 
have prevented its being finished in a short time. Since, on 
the other hand, revelation did not merely make its appear- 
ance intellectually, but in life itself, and therefore dramati- 
cally, the inspiration, which only at the end of this drama 
could complete its action, was eo ipso linked to that process 
of time which was necessary for this drama. This would 
not have been so if the special principium had merely been a 
principium of knowing, but must be so since simultaneously 
it took in life. The long duration of the first period of 
Revelation has nothing, therefore, to surprise us ; but this 
long duration should never tempt us to allow that first period 
to pass unmarked into the second. However many the ages 
were that passed by before the incarnation, that incarnation 
came at one moment of time. The new drama which began 
with this incarnation is relatively of short duration ; and 
when this drama with its apostolic postlude is ended, the 
Revelation acquires at once its oecumenic working, and thereby 
shows, that its first period of its becoming^ is now completed. 
Thus inspiration obtains a sphere of its own, in which it 
appears ; a definite course which it has to run ; a boundarj^ of 
its own, which it cannot stride across. As the fruit of its 
completion, a new condition enters in, which shows itself in 
the oecumenic appearance of the Church, and this condition 
not only does not demand the continuance of inspiration, but 
excludes it. Not, of course, as if a sudden transition took 
place which may be indicated to the very day and hour. 
Such transitions are not known in spiritual things. But if 
the exact moment escapes our observation in which a child 



420 § 76. INSPIRATIOX IN [Dir. Ill 

ceases its growth and begins its life as an adult, there is, 
nevertheless, a moment, kilown to God, in which that growth 
performed its last act. In like manner, we may assert that 
these two periods of revelation lie, indeed, separated from 
each other by a point of transition known to God, even 
though we can only approximately indicate the beginning 
of the second period. 

§ 76. Inspiration in Connection with Miracles 

So far as the special principium in God directs itself as 
principium of knowledge to the consciousness of the sinner, 
it brings about inspiration (with its concomitant illumina- 
tion); on the other hand, as principium of being (essendi), 
the spiritual and material acts of re-creation commonly called 
miracles (m^^bS? and repara^. Since, however, the world of 
thought and the world of being do not lie side by side as two 
separate existences, but are organically connected, inspiration 
formally/ has in common with the wonderful (^7?) that which 
to us constitutes the characteristic of the miracle. Conse- 
quently the formal side of the miracle need not be considered 
here. 

Very unjustly at the mention of miracles one thinks almost 
exclusively of those in the material domain, and almost with- 
out a thought passes by the spiritual miracles. This of course 
is absurd. The creation (if we may so call it) of a mind, 
such as shone forth in the holy apostle John, or such as in the 
secular world sparkled in a Plato, is, if we make comparison, 
far more majestic than even the creation of a comet in the 
heavens ; and in the same way the re-creation of a person inim- 
ical to God into a child of God is a profounder work of art 
than the healing of a leper or the feeding of the five thousand. 
That nevertheless the material miracle captivates us more, is 
exclusively accounted for by the fact, that the spiritual miracle 
is gradually observed after it is ended, and only in its effects, 
while the material miracle, as a phenomenon, is immediately 
visible to the spectator. In order not to be misled by this 
one-sided appearing in the foreground of the material miracle, 
it is necessary that we first explain the connection between 



Chap. II] CONNECTION WITH MIRACLES 421 

the spiritual and the material miracle. The undeniable fact, 
which in this connection appears most prominently, is, that 
from the days of paradise till now the spiritual miracle of 
palingenesis is ever unceasingly continued, and occurs in 
every land and among all people, while the sphere of the 
material miracle is limited and confined to time and place. 
The question of psychico-physical processes, which are often 
spoken of as miracles, is here passed by. Whether the 
study of hypnotism will succeed in lifting the veil which 
still withholds from our sight the working of soul upon soul, 
and of the soul upon the body, time will tell; but in any case 
it appears that in this domain, under definite circumstances, 
there are forces at work which find their causa causans in 
our nature, and therefore do not belong to the category of 
the miracle. With reference to the real miracle, on the other 
hand, the Holy Scripture reveals to us that there is a palin- 
genesis, not only of things invisible but also of things seen. 
The Scripture nowhere separates the soul from the body, nor 
the body from the cosmos. Psyche, body and world form 
together one organic whole. The body belongs to the real 
existence of man as truly as his psyche, and for human exist- 
ence the cosmos is an inseparable postulate. To the state of 
innocence, i.e. to that existence of man, which was the im- 
mediate product of creation, there belonged not only a holy 
soul, but also a sound body and a glorious paradise. In the 
state of sin the unholiness of the psyche entails therefore the 
corruption of the body, and likewise brings the curse upon 
the cosmos. Even as this organic connection of these three 
elements appears both in the original creation and in the state 
of sin, it continues to work its effect also in the re-creation. 
Here also the effect begins with the psyche in regeneration, 
but will continue to operate to the end in the palingenesis of 
the body, and this body will see itself placed in a re -created 
cosmos delivered from the curse. If now regeneration con- 
sisted in a sudden cutting loose of our psyche from every 
connection with sin, so that it were transformed at once into 
an absolutely holy psyche, not merely potentially, but actually, 
the palingenesis of the body would enter in at once, and if this 



422 § 76. INSPIRATION IN [Dit. Ill 

took place simultaneously in all respects, the palingenesis of 
the cosmos ■would immediately follow. This, however, is not 
so. Since our race does not enter life at one moment, but in 
the course of many centuries, and exists, not individualistically 
as an aggregate of atoms, but in organic unity, the transition 
from potentia to actus cannot take place except gradually 
and in the course of many centuries; and since each man has 
no cosmos of his own, but all men together have only one and 
the same cosmos, our ancestors (see Heb. xi. 40) could not be 
perfect without us, i.e. without us they could not attain unto 
the end of their palingenesis, and therefore the apostle Paul 
does by no means expect his crown at present, nor yet im- 
mediately after his death, but only at the last day, and then 
simultaneously with all them also that love the appearing of 
Christ (2 Tim. iv. 8). 

The very order, which is founded in the nature of our race, 
brings it to pass, that the re-creation of the body and of the 
cosmos tarries till the end. If thus the miracle as such, in 
that special sense in which we here consider it, had not ap- 
peared until the parousia, the saving power would have 
brought about none other but a spiritual effect. There would 
have been regeneration, i.e. palingenesis of the psyche; but 
no more. A power would have become manifest capable of 
breaking psychically the dominion of sin; but that the same 
power would be able to abolish the misery^ which is the result 
of sin, would have been promised in the word, but would 
never have been manifested in the deed, and as an unknown 
X would have been a stone of offence upon which faith would 
have stumbled. The entire domain of the Christian hope 
would have remained lying outside of us as incapable of 
assimilation. This is only prevented by the fact, that already 
in this present dispensation, by way of model or sample, the 
power of palingenesis is shown within the domain of matter. 
In that sense they are called " signs." As such we are shown 
that there is a power able to check every result of sin in the 
material world. Hence the rebuke of the elements, the 
feeding without labor, the healing of the sick, the raising of 
the dead, etc. ; altogether manifestations of power, which 



Chap. II] CONNECTION WITH MIRACLES 423 

were not exhausted in the effort at that given moment to 
save those individuals, for this all ratio sufficiens was want- 
ing ; but which once having taken place, were perpetuated 
by the tradition of the Scripture for all people and every 
generation, in order to furnish a permanent foundation to the 
hope of all generations. For this purpose they could not 
create ai new reality (Lazarus indeed dies again), but tended 
merely to prove the possibility of redemption in facts ; and 
this they had to do under two conditions: (1) that succes- 
sively they should overcome every effect of sin in our human 
misery ; and (2) that they should be a model, a proof, a 
a-TjjjLelov., and therefore be limited to one period of time and 
to one circle. Otherwise it would have become a real palin- 
genesis, and they would have forfeited their character of 
signs. There were hundreds in and about Jerusalem whom 
Jesus might have raised from the dead. That Lazarus 
should be raised is no peculiar favor to him; for after once 
having died in peace, who would ever wish to return to this 
life in sin? but it was to glorify God, i.e. to exhibit that 
power of God which is also able to abolish death. This is 
what must be shown in order that both psychically and 
physically salvation shall be fully revealed. Thus only does 
hope receive its indispensable support. And in this way 
also by these signs is regeneration immediately bound into 
one whole with the palingenesis of the body and of the cosmos 
as object of faith. What Paul writes of the experiences in 
the wilderness : " All these things happened unto them by 
way of example; and they were written for our admonition" 
(1 Cor. X. 11), is true of all this kind of miracles, of which 
with equal authority we may say: "Now all these things 
happened by way of example; and they were written for 
our admonition." 

The destructive and rebuking miracles are entirely in line 
with this. With the parousia belongs the judgment. The 
misery., which as the result of sin now weighs us down, is 
yet by no means the consummation of the ruin. If now that 
same power of God, by which the palingenesis of soul, body 
and of cosmos shall hereafter be established, will simultane- 



424 § 76. INSPIRATION IN [Div. Ill 

ously, and as result of the judgment, bring about the destruc- 
tion as well of soul, body and cosmos in hell, then it follows 
that the signs of salvation must run parallel with the signs 
of the destruction, which merely form the shadow alongside 
of the light. 

If both these kinds of miracles, however strongly con- 
trasted with each other, bear one and the same character at 
heart, it is entirely different with the real miracles, which do 
not take place as ensamples (rfTri/cw?), but invade the world 
of reality. Only think of the birth of Isaac, of the birth of 
Christ, of his resurrection, of the outpouring of the Holy 
Spirit, etc. The motive of these miracles, which form an 
entire class by themselves, lies elsewhere, even in this, that 
the re-creation of our race could not be wrought simply by 
the individual regeneration and illumination of the several 
elect, but must take place in the centrum of the organism of 
humanity. And since this organism in its centrum also does 
not exist psychically only, but at the same time physically, 
the re-creation of this centrum could not be effected, except 
by the working being both psychical and physical, which is 
most vividly felt in the mystery of the incarnation. The 
incarnation is the centrum of this entire central action, and 
all miracles which belong to this category tend to inaugu- 
rate this incarnation, or are immediate results of it, like the 
resurrection. All clearness in our view of the miracles 
must be lost, if one neglects to distinguish between this 
category of the real-central miracles and the category of 
the typical miracles in the periphery ; or if it be lost from 
sight, that both these real as well as these typical miracles 
stand in immediate connection with the all-embracing mir- 
acle that shall sometime make an end of this existing order 
of things. 

If, now, it is asked to what category inspiration belongs, it 
is evident at once that inspiration bears no typical, but a real, 
character, and belongs not to the periphery but to the cen- 
trum. Itself psychical by nature, it must, meanwhile, reveal 
its working in the physical domain as well : (1) because the 
persons whom it chose as its instruments existed physically 



Chap. II] CONNECTION WITH MIRACLES 425 

also ; (2) because it sought its physical crystallization in the 
Scripture ; and (3) because its content embraced the physical 
also, and, therefore, often could not do without the manifesta- 
tion. Nevertheless the psychical remains its fundamental 
tone, and as the incarnation brought life into the centrum 
of human being, inspiration brings the knowledge of God into 
human knowledge, i.e. into the central consciousness of our 
human race. From this special principium in God the saving 
power is extended centrally to our race, both by the ways 
of being and of thought, by incarnation and inspiration. 

From this it appears that formally the miracle bears the 
characteristic of proceeding forth from the special, and not 
from the natural principium, in God. The miracle is no 
isolated fact, but a mighty movement of life, which, whether 
really or typically or, perhaps, in the parousia teleologically, 
goes out from God into this cosmos, groaning under sin and 
the curse ; and that centrally as well as peripherally, in 
order organically to recreate that cosmos and to lead it 
upward to its final consummation. Are we now justified in 
saying that miracle antagonizes nature, violates natural law, 
or transcends nature? We take it, that all these representa- 
tions are deistic and take no account of the ethical element. 
If you take the cosmos as a product wrought by God, which 
henceforth stands outside of Him, has become disordered, 
and now is being restored by Him from without, with such a 
mechanical-deistical representation you must make mention 
of something that is against or above nature ; but at the 
penalty of never understanding miracle. This is the way 
the watchmaker does, who makes the watch and winds it, 
and, when it is out of order, repairs it with his instruments ; 
but such is not the method pursued in the re-creation. God 
does not stand deistically over against the world, but by 
immanent power He bears and holds it in existence. That 
which you call natural power or natural law is nothing but 
the immanent power of God and the will of God immanently 
upholding this power, while both of these depend upon His 
transcendent counsel. It will not do, therefore, to represent 
it as though the world once created miscarried against the 



426 § 76. INSPIRATION IN [Div. Ill 

expectation of God, and as though, after that, God were bent 
upon the invention of means by which to make good the loss 
He had suffered. He who reasons like this is no theologian ; 
i.e. he does not go to work theologically, but starts out from 
the human representation, viz. that as we are accustomed to 
manufacture something, and after we see it fail try to repair 
it, so he carries this representation over upon God. And so 
you derive the archetype from man and make God's doing 
ectypal ; and this is not justifiable in any circumstance, since 
thereby you deny the creatorship in God. Our Reformed 
theologians, therefore, have always placed the counsel of God 
in the foreground, and from the same counsel from which the 
re-creation was to dawn they have explained the issue of cre- 
ation itself. Even the infra-lapsarian Reformed theologians 
readily acknowledged that the re-creation existed ideally, i.e. 
already completely in the counsel of God, before the creation 
itself took place. What they called the appointment of a 
Mediator (constitutio mediatoris) preceded the first actual 
revelation of sin. Hence there is no twofold counsel, so that 
on the one hand the decree of creation stands by itself, to which, 
at a later period, the decree of salvation is mechanically added; 
but in the deepest root of the consciousness of God both are 
one. Interpreted to our human consciousness, this means 
to say, that the creation took place in such a way, that in 
itself it carried the possibility of re-creation ; or, to state it 
more concretely still, man is not first created as a unity that 
cannot be broken, then by sin and death disjointed into parts 
of soul and corpse, and now, by an act of power mechanically 
applied from without, restored to unity ; but in the creation 
of man itself lay both the possibility of this break and the 
possibility of the reunion of our nature. Without sin, soul 
and body would never have been disjoined by death ; yet 
in the creation of man in two parts (dichotomy) lay the 
possibility of this breach. But, in like manner, if our body 
had merely a mechanical use in actuality, and did not develop 
organically from a potentia or germ, reunion of what was 
once torn apart would have been impossible. Just because, 
in the creation, this potential-organical was characteristic of 



Chap. II] CONNECTION WITH MIRACLES 427 

our body, the redemption also of the body is possible and its 
reunion with the separated soul. 

Thus one needs merely to return to the counsel of God, 
which lies back of creation and re-creation, and embraces 
both in unity, in order once for all to escape from the 
mechanical representation of a Divine interference in an 
independently existing nature. Sin and misery will, without 
doubt, continue to bear the character of a disturbance, and 
consequently all re-creation the character of providence and 
restoration, but both creation and re-creation flow forth from 
the selfsame counsel of God. This is most clearly apparent 
from the fact, that re-creation is by no means merely the 
healing of the breach or the repairing of what was broken 
and disturbed. Spiritually, regeneration does by no means 
restore the sinner to the state of original righteousness 
(justitia originalis). He who has been regenerated stands 
both lower ^ so far as he still carries the tendrils of sin inwoven 
in his heart, and higher^ so far as potentially he can no more 
fall. Likewise physically, the resurrection of our body does 
by no means return to us an Adamic body, but a glorified 
body. Neither will the parousia bring back to us the old 
paradise, but a new earth under a new heaven. Hence the 
matter stands thus, that in the counsel of God there were two 
ways marked out, by which to lead soul, body and world to 
their organic consummation in the state of glory: one apart 
from sin, by gradual development, and the other, through sin, 
by a potentially absolute re-creation ; and that, furthermore, 
in creation everything was disposed to both these possibilities. 
If nature is taken in its concrete appearance, it is no longer 
what it was in the creation, but its ordinance is disturbed; 
and if this disturbed ordinance is accepted as its real and 
permanent one, then indeed, its re-creation, in us as well as 
about us, must appear to us as a violence brought upon it, for 
the sake of destroying the violence which we inflicted upon it 
by sin. If, on the other hand, you take nature as it appears in 
creation itself, and with its foundations lies in the counsel of 
God, then its original ordinance demands that this disturbance 
be reacted against, and it be brought to realize its end (reXo?) ; 



428 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

and for this purpose the action goes out from the selfsame 
counsel of God, from which its ordinance came forth. In 
God and in His counsel there is but one principium, and if 
we distinguish between a special principium or one of grace, 
which presently works in upon the natural principium, we 
only do this in view of the twofold providence, which must 
have been given, in the one decree of creation, just because 
the cosmos was ethically founded. That the working of these 
two principia form a twofold sphere for our consciousness, 
cannot be avoided, because the higher consciousness, which 
reduces both to unity, will only be our portion in the state 
of glory. This antithesis, however, is not present with God 
for a moment. He indeed works all miracles from the 
deeper lying powers, which were fundamental to the crea- 
tion itself, without at a single point placing a second creation 
by the side of the first. Wherever the Scripture speaks of a 
renewal^ it is never meant that a new power should originate, 
or a new state of being should arise, but simply that a new 
shoot springs from the root of creation itself, that of this 
new shoot a graft is entered upon the old tree, and that in 
this way the entire plant is renewed and completed. Crea- 
tion and re-creation, nature and grace, separate, so far as 
the concrete appearance in the practical application is con- 
cerned, but both in the counsel of God and in the poten- 
tialities of being they have one root. The miracle, therefore, 
in its concrete form is not from nature, but from the root 
from which nature sprang. It is not mechanically added 
to nature, but is organically united to it. This is the rea- 
son why, after the parousia, all action of the principium 
of grace flows back into the natural principium, brings 
this to its consummation, and thus, as such, itself dis- 
appears. 

§ 77. Inspiration according to the Self- Testimony of the 

Scripture 

The naive catechetical method of proving the inspiration 
of the Holy Scripture from 2 Tim. iii. 16 or 2 Pet. i. 21, 
cannot be laid to the charge of our Reformed theologians. 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 429 

They did not hesitate to expose the inconclusiveness of such 
circle-reasoning. They appeal indeed to this and similar 
utterances, when it concerned the question, what interpreta- 
tion of inspiration the Holy Scripture itself gives us. And 
that was right. As the botanist cannot learn to know the 
nature of the life of the plant except from the plant itself, the 
theologian also has no other way at command, by which to 
learn to understand the nature of inspiration, except the 
interrogating of the Scripture itself. Meanwhile, there is this 
difference between a plant and the Scripture, that the plant 
does 7iot speak concerning itself, and the Scripture does. In 
the Scripture dominates a conscious life. In the Scripture 
the Scripture itself is spoken about. Hence, two ways pre- 
sent themselves to us by which to obtain an insight into the 
matter : (1) that we, as with every other object which one 
investigates, watch for ourselves, where in the Scripture the 
track of inspiration becomes visible ; but likewise (2) that 
we interrogate those, who in the Scripture declare them- 
selves concerning the Scripture. And, of course, we must 
begin with the latter. Inspiration is a specific phenomenon, 
strange to us, but which was not strange to those holy per- 
sons, called of God, who were themselves its organs. From 
them, in the first place, we must learn what they taught 
concerning inspiration. In them the spirit, which animates 
the entire Scripture, consciously expresses itself. Not with 
equal clearness in all. Here also we find a gradual differ- 
ence. In the absolute sense it can be said of the Christ only, 
that the self-consciousness of the Scripture expressed itself 
completely in Him. When Christ was on earth the entire 
Scripture of the Old Testament was already in existence; 
which renders it of the utmost importance to us to know 
what character Jesus attributed to the inspiration of the Old 
Covenant. If it appears that Christ attributed absolute 
authority to the Old Covenant, as an organic whole, then 
the matter is settled for every one who worships Him as his 
Lord and his God, and confesses that He can not err. This 
proof, however, from the nature of the case, is without force 
to him who does not thus believe in his Saviour, and for him 



430 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

there is no demonstration possible. He who stands outside 
of the palingenesis cannot entertain any other demonstration 
but that which is derived from nature and reason in their 
actual form ; and how would you ever be able from these to 
reach your conclusions concerning the reality of that which 
does not pretend to spring either from nature or from rea- 
son ? Hence they only, who stand in conscious life-contact 
with the life-sphere of Christ can accept the force of demon- 
stration, which lies in the testimony concerning the Script- 
ure by Jesus, as its highest organ. Even then, however, it 
must be clearly held in view, that the reports of the Gospels 
concerning what Jesus said about the Old Testament, appear 
at this point of our argument as reports only, and not as testi- 
mony already authenticated. The value to be attached to this 
tradition concerning the utterances of Jesus, springs (while 
taken as yet outside of faith in inspiration) not from the bare 
communication of these utterances, but (1) from their multi- 
formity ; (2) from the stamp of originality which these 
utterances bear ; (3) from their being interwoven with the 
events described ; and (4) from their agreement with the 
utterances of Jesus' disciples, whose epistles have come to 
us. If such reports of Jesus' ideas about the Scripture were 
very rare, if they appeared for their own purposes only, or if 
it was their aim to formulate a certain theory of inspiration, 
then (always reckoning without faith in the Scriptures) they 
would not possess such a historic value to us ; but since there 
is no trace of such a design, and no insertion of a system is 
thought of, and only the use is shown which Jesus made of 
the Scripture amid the most varied circumstances and with all 
sorts of applications, from these reports it is historically cer- 
tain, for him also who does not reckon with inspiration, that 
Jesus judged the Scripture thus, and not otherwise. 

This value, moreover, rises in importance by the fact, that 
that which Jesus appears to have thought about the Old 
Testament, agrees with the conception which, before his 
appearing, was prevalent concerning the Old Covenant. He 
introduces no new way of viewing it, but seals the concep- 
tion that was current, and characterizes himself only by the 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 431 

original, i.e. not borrowed, application of the dominant man- 
ner of view. It was but natural, therefore, that the theory 
of accommodation became current a century ago, and that 
on the ground of these accommodations all value was dis- 
puted to these utterances of Jesus. But by accepting the 
possibility of accommodation with Christ, He eo ipso is 
already forsaken as the Christ ; which is the more apparent, 
when one hears how the inspiration-theory, which was cur- 
rent at the time and which still forms an essential part of 
the confession in all Christian Churches, was execrated as 
being unworthy of God, antagonistic to the character of the 
spiritual^ and as barren and mechanical. At present, there- 
fore, the opponents of this theory themselves acknowledge 
that they would do violence to their consciences and commit 
sin, if for the sake of the masses they carried themselves as 
though they put faith in this theory. This they deem them- 
selves not warranted in doing. How, then, will you accept 
such a sinful accommodation of what is unworthy of God and 
in conflict with the character of spiritual life, in Him whom 
you worship as the incarnate Word ? The accommodation- 
theory, still tenable in days when the diverging theologians 
themselves accommodated, and considered it no evil but duty^ 
became untenable with the Christ from the moment when 
all such accommodation was rejected as moral weakness. He 
who perseveres, nevertheless, in his application of this theory 
to what Jesus said concerning the Scripture, attacks not the 
Scripture, but the Deity of Jesus and even His moral char- 
acter. Even the pretence that Jesus accommodated in good 
faith, while this would be had faith for us, does not help 
matters. If Jesus did not know that the conception which 
He accepted was untrue, there was no accommodation ; if 
Jesus did know this, then all such accommodation, in spite 
of better knowledge, was sin also in Him. 



To come to the point, we emphasize in the first place, that 
Jesus looked upon the several writings of the Old Testament 
as forming one organic whole. To Him they did not consti- 



432 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

tute a collection of products of Hebrew literature, but He 
valued them as a holy unity of a peculiar sort. 

For this we refer in the first place to John x. 34, 35 : the 
Scripture canriot be broken. This utterance is of threefold 
importance. First, the whole Old Testament, from which 
Psalm Ixxxii. 6 is here quoted, is entitled by the singular 
7/3a</>7;, by the article rj is indicated as a whole of a peculiar 
sort, and to this whole an absolute character is attributed 
by the "cannot be broken." Secondly, it is out of the 
question that by rj fypa(\>rj can have been meant not Scripture, 
but spiritual revelation, because the " word of God " in what 
immediately precedes is clearly distinguished from the ypa<f>7]. 
And thirdly, it is impossible that ypacprj should indicate the 
quotation in hand, and not the Old Testament, since a con- 
clusion a ^en^raZz ad particulare follows, and just in this form : 
The Scripture cannot be broken ; this saying from Psalm 
Ixxxii. 6 occurs in the Scripture ; hence Psalm Ixxxii. 6 also 
cannot be broken. Which, moreover, is confirmed by the 
expression " in your Law." He who quotes from the Psalms, 
and then declares that it is found in the Law, shows that he 
uses the name Law for the entire Old Testament, and thus 
views this Testament as one organic whole. 

This unity appears likewise from Matt. xxi. 42, where 
Jesus asks: "Did ye never read in the Scriptures?" and then 
quotes Psalm cxviii. 22, 23. No citation, therefore, from 
two different books, but a citation from one book, that of 
the Psalms, even two verses from the same Psalm. This 
shows that " the Scriptures " here does not refer to the 
Psalms, but to the whole Old Testament, in which the Psalms 
occur, and likewise that Jesus comprehends this Old Testa- 
ment under the name of ^ypa^aC as a unity, and by the article 
at isolates it from all other <ypa<l)aL. The same we find in Matt. 
xxii. 29, in the words: "Ye do err, not knowing the Script- 
ures, nor the power of God." Here, also, ai jpacfiai appears 
absolutely as the designation of the entire Holy Scripture 
then in existence. Keeping no count with those Scriptures 
is indicated as the cause of their erring, and the Scripture, 
i.e. the Old Testament, is here coordinated with " the power of 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 433 

God." In like manner we read in Matt. xxvi. 54 : ''How 
then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must 
be ? " Here also the Scriptures of the Old Testament ap- 
pear as one whole, which is called al ypacftai^ and it is a 
Scripture, such as offers the program of what was to come, 
and gives that program with such authority, that the fulfil- 
ment of it could not fail. This program was not contained 
in this word or that, but in the whole Scripture, which here 
appears as organically one. Compare with this the similar 
utterance in Mark xiv. 49: " But this is done that the Script- 
ures might be fulfilled." That at another time Jesus indi- 
cated the same unity by the law^ appears from John x. 34, 
and appears likewise from John xv. 25, where the Lord quotes 
from Psalms xxxv. and Ixix., and declares concerning this, 
that that is written "in their law." And if proof is called 
for, that Jesus viewed this unit not only as organically one, 
but represented to Himself the groups also in this unit as 
organically related, then look in John vi. 45, where He quotes 
from Isaiah liv. and from Jeremiah xxxi., and affirms, not 
that this occurs as such in Isaiah and Jeremiah, but in the 
prophets. This subdivision also of the Scripture, which is 
called " the prophets," is thus indicated by the article as one 
organic whole, which as such offers us the program of the 
future. 

In the second place, it appears that Jesus recognized of the 
Scriptures of the Old Testament in the sense of a single 
whole of authoritative writing, that a word, or a fragment 
of it was authoritative, and that as 7)oa^?7, or yeypafjifievov, 
or yeypaTTTat it possessed that high condition, that men could 
make their appeal to it. The use of these expressions does 
not point to a citation but to an authority/ in the sense in 
which Pilate exclaimed: "What I have written I have 
written," which he did not say as author but as governor, 
clothed with discretionary authority. Neither the 'yeypaTrrat 
nor the yeypa/jL/xevov can be thought without a subject from 
whom it goes forth, and this subject must have authority to 
determine something, simply because he writes. If now 
yeypaTrrac^ as in this instance, is used in an entirely absolute 



434 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

sense, and without the least indication of this subject, it im- 
plies that this subject is the absolute subject in that circle. 
In the state ^i^paivTai expresses that something is law ; and 
in the spiritual domain ^e^^pairTai indicates that here God 
speaks, prophesies, or commands. Since in this sense Jesus 
again and again uses all sorts of utterances from the Old 
Testament as decisive arguments in His reasoning, it appears 
that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as having gone forth 
from this absolute subject, and therefore as being of imperial 
authority. That Jesus really uses the Scripture of the Old 
Testament in this way, as "judge of the cause" (index litis) 
appears, for instance, from Mark xii. 10 : " And have ye not 
read even this Scripture ? " and then there follows a citation 
from Psalm cxviii. By Scripture here the Old Testament is 
not meant ; but to this definite utterance from Psalm cxviii. 
23 the character is attributed of being a Scripture. Likewise 
in Luke iv. 21, where, after having read a portion from Isaiah 
Ixi., He said to the people in the synagogue at Nazareth, 
" To-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears," by 
Scripture He does not refer to the Book, but to this particu- 
lar utterance, and honors this utterance itself as ypaiprj. 
Whether, in John vii. 38, <ypa(f>i] refers to the entire Scripture 
or to a given text, cannot be determined ; but we meet with 
a similar use of Scripture in John xiii. 18, where, in view of 
the coming betrayal by Judas, Jesus says : " That the Script- 
ure may be fulfilled," and then adds : " He that eateth my 
bread lifted up his heel against me." Even though it does 
not read here 97 'ypa(f>r) avrrj, it is very clear that here again 
the utterance itself is called ypacfn], otherwise it would need 
to read, ^ ypacftrj tjtl^ Xeyei. Then jpacj^rj would refer to the 
Scripture ; but not now ; now it must refer to the text quoted. 
Of yeypaTTTac or of yeypa/jufMevov this needs no separate proof, 
since these expressions admit of no doubt. When, in Matt, 
iv. 4 and the following verses, Jesus places each time His " it 
is written " over against the temptation, it implies of itself 
that Jesus not merely quotes, but appeals to an authority 
which puts an end to all contradiction. Without this sup- 
position the appeal to Deut. viii. 3, etc., has no meaning. 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 435 

When such an appeal is introduced, not by saying: Thus 
spake Moses, but by the formula " It is written,''^ it admits no 
other interpretation than that, according to the judgment of 
Jesus, this word derived its Divine authority from the fact 
that it is written; in the same way in which an article of 
law has authority among us, because it is in the law. To 
attribute a weaker significance to this is simply i71ogical and 
subverts the truth. Even though one may refuse to attribute 
such an authority to the Old Testament Scripture, it may 
never be asserted that Jesus did not attribute this to them ; at 
least so long as it is not affirmed that none of these utterances 
of Jesus are original with Him ; which even the most strin- 
gent criticism has not as yet asserted. 

But Jesus goes farther. It is not simply that He attributes 
such an authority to this and other utterances of the Old 
Testament, but in these utterances He attributes that author- 
ity even to single words. This we learn from His argument 
with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection from the 
dead, Matt. xxii. 32. From the fact that God, centuries 
after the death of the patriarchs, still reveals Himself as the 
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Jesus concludes that these 
three patriarchs were still in existence, since God could not 
call Himself their God if they were no more alive. This 
demonstration would have no ground if by a little addition 
or modification in the construction, "I am the God of thy 
father," were intended in the preterite. Then God would 
have been their God. This expression, in its very form, is 
nevertheless so authoritative for Jesus, that from this form of 
the saying He concludes the resurrection of the dead. Jesus 
extends this authority even to a letter, when, in Luke xvi. 
17, He says that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, 
than for one tittle of the law to fail; which, as appears from the 
preceding verse, does not refer to the ten commandments, 
nor even to the laws adduced, but to the law and the prophets, 
i.e. to the entire Scripture. This tittle, which referred to 
the apostrophized iod, was the smallest letter in the apographa, 
and the saying that even no tittle shall fail, vindicates the 
authority even to the letter. In Matt. xxii. 41, the strength 



436 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

of Jesus' argument hangs on the single word Lord. " The 
Lord said unto my Lord ; " yea, even more precisely, on the 
single iod. The emphasis falls on the '-'-my Lord." In John 
X. 35 the entire argument falls to the ground, except the one 
word " gods " have absolute authority. In the same way it 
can be shown, in a number of Jesus' arguments from the 
Scripture, that in the main they do not rest upon the general 
contents, but often upon a single word or a single letter. 
The theory therefore of a general tendency in the spiritual 
domain, which in the Old Testament should merely have an 
advisory authority, finds no support in Jesus. 

The same result is reached when notice is taken of Jesus' 
judgment concerning the contents of Old Testament Script- 
ure. Without the spur of any necessity, entirely voluntarily, 
in Luke xvi. 29 Jesus puts the words upon Abraham's lips 
to the rich man : " They have Moses and the prophets ; let 
them hear them." This is said in answer to the prayer that 
some one might be sent to earth in the name of God to 
proclaim the will of God. This is denied by the remark, 
that in the earth they already are in possession of a Divine 
authority, even the Old Testament. The " hear them " 
here has the same significance as the "hear him" at the 
baptism of Jesus ; it means, to subject oneself to Divine 
authority. Jesus appears to attribute entirely the same 
character to the content of the Old Testament as often as 
He refers to the fact that the Scripture "must be ful- 
filled," and " cannot be broken." All that men have thought 
out or invented can be corrected by the result, can be seen 
from the outcome to have been mistakenly surmised, and is 
therefore susceptible to heing broken. The only thing not 
susceptible to this is the program God Himself has given, 
and given in a definite form. The need^ the must^ which 
Jesus again and again applies to His passion, and applies to 
particulars, is only in place with the supposition of such a 
program for His passion given by God. Not to see this is to 
be unwise^ and shows that one is " slow of heart to believe," 
Luke xxiv. 25. It needs scarcely a reminder that this need 
of fulfilment is by no means exhausted in a general sense, as 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 437 

though there were merely a- certain necessity and, in a cer- 
tain sense, a typical parallelism between that which befell 
the faithful of the past and of the present, but that Jesus 
applies His rule with equal decision to that which is appar- 
ently accidental. Thus in Luke xxii. 37, when He says : " I 
say unto you, that this which is written must be fulfilled 
in me. And he was reckoned with transgressors : for that 
which concerneth me hath fulfilment," here, indeed, Jesus 
points to a concrete and very special yeypa/jifjievov, which ex- 
cept in a very rare instance did not intensify the bitterness 
of the martyr's death. The simultaneous crucifixion with 
Jesus of two malefactors lacks, therefore, all inward neces- 
sity. And yet of this very definite yeypafifxevov Jesus pur- 
posely declares that it must be fulfilled in Him, and as a 
motive of thought He adds, that what has been prophesied 
concerning Him cannot rest before it has accomplished its 
end.^ In Matt. xxvi. 54 Jesus declares that He does not 
exercise His omnipotence, nor invoke the legions of angels 
to save Him from His passion, since the prophecy of the Old 
Testament forbids Him doing this. Beyond all doubt it is 
certain that the prophetic program must be carried out, and 
in case He were to oppose it, " how then should the Scriptures 
be fulfilled, that thus it must be? " Thus Jesus acknowledges 
that in prophecy there lies before us a copy of the counsel 
of God concerning Him, and for this reason the realization 
of this program could not remain wanting. Jesus expresses 
this same thought even more strongly in John xiii. 18, where 
He characterizes the betrayal by Judas not only as unavoida- 
ble that the Scripture may be fulfilled, that he who ate bread 
with Him should lift up his heel against Him, but even 
adds: "From henceforth I tell you before it come to pass, 
that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he," 

1 The exegesis : For my affairs have come to an end, which Meyer too 
defends, is justly rejected ; (1) because it loses from view the reference of 
the riXos to Te\e(Tdrjpai ; (2) because such a saying would have had sense in 
the general announcement of His death, not in the special indication of some- 
thing that would accompany His death ; and (3) because it should have had 
to read : that the end was near or at hand. That all things have an end is 
an argument all too weak to claim support. 



438 § 77. INSPIRATION ACCORDING TO THE [Div. Ill 

and thus imposed upon them His insight, that this prophecy 
referred to Him, as Divine authority. 

This, however, may not be taken as though in the Old 
Testament Jesus had merely seen a mosaic from which He 
took a separate Scripture according to the occasion. On the 
contrary, the Old Testament is one whole to Him, which as 
a whole refers to Him. " Ye search the Scriptures," said He 
(John 5 : 39) to the Scribes, " because ye think that in them 
ye have eternal life ; and they are they which hear witness of 
me,'''' As a whole the Scripture points thus concentrically to 
Him. Hence His citation of two utterances of the Old 
Testament in one dictum, as for instance in Matt. ix. 13, 
from Hosea vi. 6 and from Micah vi. 8 ; which is only ex- 
plicable from the point of view that back of the secondary 
authors (auctores secundarii) of each book you recognize 
one first author (auctor primarius), in whose plan and 
utterance of thought lies the organic unity of the several 
Scriptures. The secondary author is sometimes named, but 
only with the quotations of those utterances which did not 
come forth from them, but which were directed to them, as 
for instance in Matt. xiii. 14, where we read : " And unto 
them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah," and then follows 
Isaiah vi. 9, " concerning those who seeing do not perceive," 
which was spoken by God to Isaiah in the vision of his call. 
We find the same in Matt. xv. 7, 8, where Jesus says : "Ye 
hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying : This 
people honoreth me with their lips, etc.," in which the " Me " 
itself indicates that Isaiah did not speak these words, but 
God. That this conception embraced not merely the pro- 
phetical, but likewise the historical, books appears from the 
constant reference to what occurs in the Old Testament con- 
cerning Noah, Abel, Abraham, Sodom, Lot, the queen of Sheba, 
Solomon, Jonah, etc., all of which are historic references 
which show that the reality of these events was a certainty 
to Jesus, even as they were a certainty to those to whom He 
spake. If it be true, therefore, that in no given instance 
Jesus utters an express declaration concerning inspiration, 
it appears sufficiently clearly, that He considered the Script- 



Chap. II] SELF-TESTIMONY OF THE SCRIPTURE 439 

ures of the Old Covenant to be the result of a Divine act 
of revelation, the original and real subject of which was 
"God" or "the Spirit." 

But there is more ; it can be shown that Jesus Himself 
has given utterance to the idea of inspiration^ and, on the 
other hand, that He, by no single word, has opposed the 
ideas which at that time existed concerning inspiration. The 
idea of inspiration is, that God by His Spirit enters into 
the spirit of man, and introduces into his sjpirit, i.e. into 
his consciousness, a concrete thought, which this man could 
not derive from himself nor from other men. This very 
idea we find even put antithetically, in Matt. xvi. 17, 
where Jesus says to Peter that his confession of Him as the 
Christ, the Son of the living God, is no product of what 
he himself has thought or other people had whispered 
in his ear ; flesh and blood taken here as the human, in an- 
tithesis to God, have not imparted this knowledge to him ; 
it has come to him by revelation^ even from the Father who 
is in heaven. That this idea of inspiration did not limit 
itself to the quickening of a certain disposition or perception, 
but in the conception of Jesus implied also the inspiration 
of conscious thoughts, appears sufficiently clearly from Luke 
xii. 12, where Jesus says : " For the Holy Spirit shall teach 
you in that very hour what ye ought to say." This does not 
prove that Jesus explains the Old Testament to have origi- 
nated in this same way, but it shows that there was nothing 
strange to Jesus in the idea of such an inspiration, that He 
considered it by no means unworthy of God, and that He 
raised its reality above all doubt. And if we connect with 
this the fact, that the contemporaries of Jesus explained the 
Scriptures of the Old Covenant from such an inspiration, 
and that Jesus nowhere contradicted this representation, but 
rather confirmed it by His use of the Old Testament, then no 
one has the right to combat, by an appeal to Jesus, such an 
inspiration of the Old Testament as one less worthy of God. 
From the above it rather appears that Jesus viewed the 
Old Testament in the same way as His contemporaries and 
as the Christian Church has done throup'hout all ao-es 



440 § 77. INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURE [Div. Ill 

in all its official confessions, and views it to this clay. By 
Avhich we do not mean to say that the later outworking of 
this conception may not become open to severe criticism, 
but from it, nevertheless, the result may and must be drawn 
that to appeal to the Old Testament as to a decisive Divine 
authority, as is still done this day by those who hold fast to 
the Scripture, finds not merely a support in the example of 
Jesus, but became prevalent in the Christian Churches by 
His example and upon the authority of His name, and by 
His example is ever yet maintained in the face of all dis- 
solving criticism; not as the result of scientific investiga- 
tion, but as the fruit of a higher inworking in the spiritual 
consciousness. 

The objection to this, derived from Matt. v. 21-45, scarcely 
needs a refutation. In this pericope, the Lord declares very 
emphatically that the ancients have said thus and so, and 
that He puts His sayings over against these. But this 
does not form an antithesis between Jesus and the Old 
Testament ; on the contrary by His accurate exegesis He but 
maintains the Old Testament over against the false exegeses 
of the Sanhedrin of His day. In this connection Jesus 
speaks nowhere of a Scripture^ but of an oral tradition, 
and of sayings ; and in this oral tradition of the ancients 
the commandment had either been limited to its letter, or 
weakened by addition, or falsified by an incorrect antith- 
esis, and what was a Divine dispensation had been made 
to be a fixed rule. Against this Jesus ranges Himself with 
the spiritual interpretation of the law. That a man must 
not look upon a woman to desire her was the simple applica- 
tion of the tenth commandment to the seventh, in connection 
with Job xxxi. 1 and Psalm cxix. 37. Likewise, the love 
of an enemy is not put by Jesus as something new above or 
against the Old Testament, but the narrow and pregnant 
meaning given by the Sanhedrin to the expression neighbor 
is combated by Jesus in the spirit of Proverbs xxv. 21. It 
is, indeed, entirely inconceivable how the absurd idea that 
Jesus here placed Himself in opposition to the Old Testa- 
ment, could be entertained for a single moment, by those 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 441 

who have studied the connection. Just before this pericope, 
in this same address of our Lord, it is said that he who 
had broken one of these least commandments stood guilty ; 
and that He was come, not to destroy the Scripture of the 
Old Covenant, but to fulfil these by "His doctrines, life and 
passion." The warning, not to think that Jesus draws the 
sword against the Old Testament, is expressly added here. 

In closing let it be noted, that for three years Jesus had 
been most narrowly watched by the Sanhedrin, and every 
word He spoke had been carefully sifted. At that time there 
were two holy things in Israel : their Scripture and their 
temple. Of these two Jesus gave up the temple, of which 
He said that not one stone would be left upon the other; 
while, on the contrary, of the Scripture He declared, that no 
jot or tittle of it shall pass till all shall be fulfiled. Concern- 
ing His speech against the temple, complaint was made against 
Him, though the form of the charge was unjust. If He had 
uttered a single word against the Scripture of the Old Testa- 
ment, He would certainly have been similarly accused. With 
reference to this, however, you observe no charge, not even 
a weak reproach, and from this it may be inferred, that in 
this matter of the Scripture His enemies had no fault to find 
with Him. 

§ 78. The Testimony of the Apostles 

The self-testimony of the Scripture lies so much concen- 
trically in Jesus, that only in connection with His judgment 
has the testimony of the apostles any real value. His disci- 
ples were His followers. If with reference to the Old Testa- 
ment Jesus had paid homage to a method of viewing it which 
diverged from the then current one^ the disciples would not 
have followed the common conception, but the diverging 
conception of Jesus. If, from their ministry, it appears that 
they themselves adhered to the current conception, it may be 
inferred from this that they were at no time warned against 
it by Jesus, that He had rather confirmed it, and Himself 
had not departed from it. The testimony of the apostles, 
therefore, has this value, that it throws further light upon 



442 § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

Jesus' own conception, and confirms the result of the former 
section. 

Of the apostles, also, it is not difficult to show that they 
were familiar with the idea of inspiration and that they held 
it. This appears most strongly from Acts ii. 4: "And they 
were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with 
other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance." Now 
cLTTOcjideyyeaOaL is to utter an audible sound. Without solv- 
ing the question whether by " other tongues " languages of 
other peoples are to be understood, or sounds of an entirely 
peculiar sort, in either case the apostles brought forth sounds 
which were not produced from their own consciousness, but 
were the product of an action which went out upon them from 
the Holy Ghost. This is inspiration in the fullest sense of 
the word. Thus we read in Acts viii. 29 : " And the Spirit 
said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot." 
It does not say that this thought arose in him, but that a 
speaking took place ; and where it is our point to know the 
conception which was current in the apostolic circle, we must, 
of course, be careful to note their way of expressing them- 
selves. Of the Jews, it is said in Rom. iii. 2, '' That they were 
entrusted with the oracles of God." UtaTevdrivaL implies 
that to you, as ruler, or manager, or steward, something is 
committed which does not belong to you, has not been pro- 
duced by you, but is the property of another subject, and 
over which you are placed in a position of responsibility. 
Of the grain which he himself has raised, the farmer cannot 
say that it is committed to him ; this is only true of the grain 
which was raised by another, and is stored in his barn. 
Hence, the apostolic representation is not that thoughts, but 
that " utterances " (Xoyta) were given to them for safe-keeping 
and care, which were not original with themselves, but had 
another as subject, author and owner. And that other subject 
is named, for they are called " the oracles of God." In 1 Cor. 
vii. 40, after having given a rule for matrimony, the apostle 
says, " and I think that I also have the Spirit of God." There 
is, therefore, no question here of a moral excellence, nor yet 
of more holiness, but of an insight into the will of God. God 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 443 

alone can decide the question of marriage ; the only question 
for us is to know the will of God, and, by his statement, Paul 
claims to possess that knowledge, on the ground that he, as 
well as the writers of the Old Testament and other apostles, 
had received the Holy Ghost. That this exegesis is correct, 
appears from 1 Thess. iv. 9 ; cf . verse 2. In verse 2, he had 
said : " For ye know what charges we gave you," and after 
an instruction in the principles of these charges, he follows 
it up with these words, in verse 8 : " Therefore he that 
rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy 
Spirit unto you." Thus he assumes that his ordinances are 
the clear expression of God's will ; that for this reason they 
are divinely authoritative ; and he explains this from the 
fact that a work of the Holy Spirit has taken place in them 
or on behalf of the church. Of Moses, it is written in 
Heb. viii. 5, that he was admonished of God when he was 
about to make the tabernacle : " See that thou make all 
things according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the 
mount." To him, therefore, had come an utterance from 
the oracle^ for such is the meaning of /ce%/)r;/-taTtcrTafc, accord- 
ing to the conception which was then current in the apos- 
tolic circle ; something that did not come up from himself, 
but was given him from without ; it referred to a very con- 
crete affair, to wit: that the plan for the tabernacle was not 
to be designed by himself, but had been brought to him from 
outside. In James v. 10, we read that the prophets " spake in 
the name of the Lord," which implies that what was spoken 
by them was not binding in virtue of the authority of their 
own person or insight, but was spoken by them in the name 
of Christ Himself; which either assumes a fanatical pre- 
sumption, or, since the apostle does not mean this, can only 
be explained by the idea of inspiration. In Rev. xxii. 17-20, 
it is said that Christ bears witness to that which, by exclu- 
sively Divine authority, is written in the Apocalypse (to the 
words of the prophecy of this book), so that adding to or 
taking away from the things written in this book involves the: 
penalty of eternal loss. According to 1 Pet. i. 12, the preach- 
ing of the apostles is done " by the Holy Ghost sent forth from. 



444 § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

lieaven" ; even as it was "the Spirit of Christ" who in the 
prophets did signify beforehand (jrpofjLapTvpo/jLevov^. Even 
though the iv Trvevfian point to a different modality from the 
TTpofjLapTvpo/ievov, both expressions, nevertheless, in their con- 
nection refer to one and the same idea of inspiration, which 
receives its more general description in 2 Pet. i. 21, by the 
authentic declaration that prophecy did not find its origin in 
the " will " of the prophets themselves, but in the fact, that 
they, as "men of God" spoke that which entered into their 
consciousness while "they were being moved by the Holy 
Ghost ; " a representation which was evidently applied by 
them, even though in modified form, to the entire Scripture 
of the Old Testament, as appears from the " all Scripture is 
theopneustic," in 2 Tim. iii. 16. The fact, therefore, that 
the apostles held the idea of inspiration, and applied it to the 
Old Testament, admits of no difference of opinion. 

In the second place, it must also be noted that the apostles, 
also, did not look upon the Old Testament as a collection 
of literary documents, but as one codex, which was organi- 
cally constructed and clothed with Divine authority. That 
unity lies already expressed in the Trdcra <ypa<f>rj of 2 Tim. iii. 16, 
which does not mean the whole Scripture but everi/ Scripture, 
and hence does not emphasize the unity only, but simultane- 
ously the organic unity. The same thought lies in 1 Pet. i. 
12 : " To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, 
but unto you, did they minister these things." First, all the 
prophets are here taken under one head, and to their collec- 
tive labor the character is attributed, not of its being a work 
of their own, over which they have the right of disposal, but 
of its being a labor which they have performed with another 
purpose, which lay outside of them, and which was deter- 
mined by God. According to Heb. i. 1, it is not human 
insight, but God Himself, which spake to the fathers when 
they were spoken to by the prophets, and however much this 
took place "by divers portions and in divers manners," it all 
belonged together, formed one whole, and together consti- 
tuted God's testimony to the fathers. The apostolic manner 
of quoting confirms this. They also do not quote by the name 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 445 

of the author, but as <ypa(t>ri and yeypaTrrac. In Rom. iv. 17, 
proof is furnished by " as it is written " ; in Rom. x. 11, the 
phrase, *' for the Scripture says," is conclusive. By the words, 
" according as it is written," in Rom. xi. 8, all contradiction 
is cut off. This shows, indeed, that according to the apostolic 
representation, the entire Old Testament forms one whole, 
which is organically connected, and the content of which is 
authoritative, because it appears in this codex. Even the 
prayer of Elijah is quoted in Rom. xi. 2, as "What the 
Scripture saith," after which the answer of God to his prayer 
is mentioned as o ^pTjfjbaTLo-fjLo^ (the Divine response), and 
thus distinguished from the excitement of his own spirit. 
Especially characteristic in this respect is the extensive quo- 
tation in Rom. iii. 10-18, which is referred to as one con- 
tinuous argument, and yet is constructed from no less than 
six different chapters ; viz. Ps. xiv. 1-3, Ps. v. 9, Ps. cxl. 3, 
Ps. x. 7, Isaiah lix. 7, and Ps. xxxvi. 1. These parts are 
introduced by a yeypaTrrat, " it is written," and explained by 
the " what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them 
that are under the law." TeypaTTTat as the perfect tense, 
especially in a quotation composed of so many parts, is even 
stronger than ypacj^rj, because it is equivalent to what we call 
a law: "law enacted is sacred" (lex lata, lex sancta est). 
TeypaTTTat implies not only that it occurs or is found in the 
Scripture, but that as an expression of truth it bears the Divine 
seal. In the same way, after a quotation from the Psalms and 
Isaiah, the " what things soever the law saith " convincingly 
indicates that no importance is attached to Isaiah nor to 
David, but simply to the fact that it occurs in the holy 
codex. In these quotations the apostles do not confine 
themselves for support to the authority of pericopes or 
extended passages, but base their argument equally well 
upon a single word from the Old Testament ; one may 
almost say upon a single letter. In Gal. iii. 16, the entire 
argument rests upon the singular " seed " ; if in the original 
one letter had been written differently, and the plural had 
appeared, the entire apostolic argument would have lost its 
force. The same you find in 1 Pet. iii. 5, 6, where the 



446 §78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

exhortation rests upon the fact that Sarah called her hus- 
band "lord." In the apostolic circle, no such quotations 
could have been made, if the conviction had not been preva- 
lent that inspiration extended even to the word and to the 
form of the word ; which connection between form and con- 
tent, Paul also confirms for himself, when in 1 Cor. ii. 13, 
he declares : " Which things also we speak, not in the words 
which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches ; 
comparing spiritual things with spiritual." In this state- 
ment, indeed, the " human " and the " pneumatic " cannot 
stand over against each other as the intellectual and the 
mystical. He also bears witness instrumentally through his 
mind; his speaking, also, is the expression of intelligence, 
mostly calculated to address the understanding rather than 
the emotions. The " pneumatica," therefore, cannot intend 
anything else but the fountain from which the impulse for 
his utterances proceeds, and that fountain, he says, does not 
lie in man, but in the Spirit, and thus in a power which 
affects him from without. 

In the third place it must be conceded, that in the apos- 
tolic circle also the Old Testament was considered as the 
predestined transcript of God's counsel, of which the instru- 
mental author has, often unconsciously, produced the record, 
and which, as being of a higher origin, has Divine authority. 
This appears clearly in Acts ii. 24, 25, where Peter says : " It 
was not possible that He should be holden of death." And 
why does he deem this impossible ? Because Jesus was the Son 
of God ? Undoubtedly for this also ; of this, however, Peter 
makes no mention, but states as the only reason that it was 
thus written in Ps. xvi. : " Neither wilt thou give thy Holy 
One to see corruption." Hence the "impossibility" rests 
upon the fact that the opposite to this was written in the Old 
Testament ; an argument which suits only with the supposi- 
tion that the Old Testament furnishes us with the program of 
what must happen according to God's counsel and will. To 
that counsel and to that foreknowledge of God he refers us 
definitely in what immediately precedes : " Him being deliv- 
ered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 447 

God." Of a similar tendency is what we read in Acts i. 16, 
where Peter says : " It was needful that the Scripture should 
be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost spake before by the mouth 
of David." The thought here quoted is not from David, 
but from the Holy Ghost, even though the Holy Ghost made 
use of the mouth of David by which to utter it, and because 
the Holy Ghost took this thought from the counsel of God, 
it had to be fulfilled. In Matt. xiii. 34, 35, the apostle 
Matthew inserts the observation, that Jesus had to speak in 
parables, "that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by 
the prophet." In a similar way the apostle John inserts his 
" that the Scripture might be fulfilled " in John xix. 24, and 
elsewhere. And all these expressions of " must needs be," 
" it is necessary," " was not possible," " that the Scripture 
might be fulfilled," etc., have no meaning unless it was be- 
lieved in the apostolic circle as an undoubted fact, that the 
Old Testament presents us the Divine program of things to 
come, with such certainty as to render it entirely trustworthy. 
Hence there is no hesitancy nn announcing God the Holy 
Spirit as the speaking subject in the Old Testament. Acts 
vii. 6, "And God spake on this wise"; Rom. ii. 4, "But 
what saith the answer of God unto him ? " Heb. i. 6, " When 
he bringeth in the firstborn into the world, he saith"; Heb. 
i. 13, " But of which of the angels hath he said at any time "; 
Acts i. 16, " the Scripture . . . which the Holy Ghost spake 
before by the mouth of David"; Heb. x. 15, "And the Holy 
Ghost also beareth witness to us ; for after he hath said . . . 
saith the Lord " : expressions which are used not only when it 
concerns a saying of God (dictum Dei), but also when God 
is spoken of in the third person, as for instance Heb. iii. 7, 
" Wherefore, even as the Holy Ghost saith. To-day if ye shall 
hear his voice," or with the mention of facts, as in Heb. ix. 8, 
" the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holy 
place hath not yet been made manifest." 

The stringing together of quotations from different books, 
such as appears in Acts i. 20, Rom. xi. 8, 26, xv. 9, 1 Tim. 
V. 18, etc., shows equally clearly, that in the estimation of 
the apostles the human authors fall entirely in the back- 



448 § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

ground. Such quoting is only conceivable and warranted 
by the supposition that all these sayings, however truly they 
have come to us by several writers, are actually from one 
and the same author ; exactly in the same way in which one 
quotes from the works of the same writer or from the articles of 
the same lawgiver. That this was indeed the apostolic appre- 
hension appears more clearly still from the fact, which they 
state: that the words of the Old Testament often contain more 
than the writers themselves understood. In Rom. iv. 23 it is 
said of the words from Gen. xv. 6, that "it was reckoned 
unto him for righteousness," did not refer to Abraham only, 
as the writer must have intended, but also to us. In Rom. 
XV. 3, Ps. Ixix. 9 is quoted, and what David exclaimed in a 
Psalm, which cannot stand before the ethical judgment of 
many, is cited as coming from the Messianic subject; and 
yet this quotation furnishes the apostle the occasion for the 
general statement, "that whatsoever things were written 
aforetime were written for our learning, that through pa- 
tience and through comfort of the Scriptures we might have 
hope." This, of course, could not have been the intention 
of the instrumental authors. David sang when his heart 
was full, Jeremiah prophesied when the fire burned in his 
bones. Thus this intention is thought of as in the " mind of 
the first author," and it is only by divine direction, that the 
Scriptures are thus predestined to realize their given pur- 
pose in the Church of all the ages. This is applied not only 
to moral and doctrinal dicta^ but also to the historical parts. 
" Do ye not hear the Old Testament (jov v6/jlov) ? " Paul 
asks in Gal. iv. 22 ; " For it is written, that Abraham had 
two sons"; and of this he says: "Which things contain an 
allegory," i.e. a meaning was hidden in all this, which was 
neither foreseen nor intended by him who wrote these words. 
The same appears in Heb. v. 11, 12, where the exposition of 
the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek is introduced, 
an exposition in which numerous deductions are made from 
the common historic narrative, which were not intended by 
the writer of Genesis. The understanding of this deeper 
sense is called in verse 11 "hard of interpretation"; it does 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 449 

not lie at hand, and deeper insight only discovers it. And 
yet, this deeper insight is no play of magic with the word. 
One may readily acquire it if only one is not dull of hearing. 
If one is but mature, he is able of himself to enjoy this 
strong meat, for they "by reason of use have their senses 
exercised." It is therefore a mysterious meaning not in- 
cluded in it by the writer, but by the Holy Spirit, which now 
from behind is revealed by that same Holy Spirit to those 
who are perfect. A no less broadly prepared example of this 
is given in 1 Cor. x. 1-18, where a spiritual-typical significance 
is attached to the crossing of the Red Sea and to the events 
in the wilderness, which could not have been intended by the 
writer of the narrative. That meaning was beyond him, 
and directed itself from the mind of the primary author to 
us " upon whom the ends of the ages are come." Now only, 
because the antitypical has come, can the typical be under- 
stood. 

It can scarcely be denied, therefore, that in the apostolic 
circle, the conviction was prevalent that, without contro- 
versy, the Old Testament had come into existence as a 
sacred codex by Divine inspiration, and must be viewed as 
clothed with Divine authority. This shows that Jesus, who 
knew this conviction, did not contradict it, but put His seal 
upon it in His intercourse with His disciples. The apostolic 
use of the Old Testament tends to give us a better knowl- 
edge of Jesus' judgment concerning this codex, and, so far 
as in Jesus the self-testimony of the Scripture expresses 
itself most clearly and correctly, to make us know how the 
Scripture itself desires us to esteem it. The different objec- 
tions that have been raised against this apostolic use of the 
Old Testament, particularly upon the ground of Gal. iv. 21- 
24 and 1 Cor. x. 1-13, cannot here be examined. The ques- 
tion, indeed, what use the apostles have made of the Old 
Testament, is not critical but historic. The critical exami- 
nation, therefore, of these objections is not in place in Ency- 
clopedia, but in the disciplina canonica. One objection, 
however, may be considered here, because it really sheds light 
upon the use made by the apostles of the Holy Scripture of 



450 §78. THE TESTIMONY OE THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

the Old Testament. Their quotations are by no means always 
a literal translation of the original. This would create no 
surprise if they had not understood Hebrew, but it does with 
a man like Paul, who was well versed in the original text. 
The fact that they wrote in Greek to Greek-speaking churches 
is, from the nature of the case, no sufficient explanation. 
This, no doubt, explains why as a rule they followed the 
Greek translation which they knew was in use among their 
readers, but states no ground for their own departure from 
the original, nor yet for their following of that translation 
in places where it was incorrect. They who think that 
the writers of the apostolic circle wrote without assistance 
(suo Marte), can scarcely come to any other conclusion 
than that this mode of procedure was faulty and rested 
upon mistake, either voluntary or involuntary, but in no 
case pardonable. The matter assumes an entirely differ- 
ent aspect, however, when one starts out from the posi- 
tion that these writers themselves were inspired in a way 
analogous to the writers whose text they quoted. He who 
cites the language of another must quote literally, but a 
writer who quotes himself is bound to the actual content 
only, and not to the form of what he wrote, except in the 
face of a third party. If, therefore, it is the same Holy 
Spirit who spoke through the prophets and inspired the 
apostles, it is the same primary author (auctor primarius) 
who, by the apostles, quotes himself^ and is therefore entirely 
justified in repeating his original meaning in application to 
the case for which the quotation is made, in a somewhat 
modified form, agreeably to the current translation. Suppose 
an oration you have delivered has been translated into Eng- 
lish, and that you appear before an American audience which 
knows your position only from that English translation, will 
it not be natural, in so far as your original meaning comports 
with that translation, to quote from what your audience 
knows? Any one would; and to do so is logical. And, 
therefore, from this point of view, there is nothing strange 
in it that in the apostolic circle the auctor primarius quotes 
from his own words agreeably to the accepted translated text. 



Chap. II] § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES 451 

No one else could do this but the author himself, since he is 
both authorized and competent to guard against false inter- 
pretations of his original meaning. 

The citation from Psalm xl. 6 in Heb. x. 5 may still fur- 
ther explain this. The translation which is here given is 
undoubtedly borrowed from the LXX., and it is equally cer- 
tain that the translation of the LXX. is faulty and corrupted 
in the copies, either by the change of dyr^a, or, as others 
assert, by that of arofia into aco/uba. D'^M^^ is not acofia, but 
wTia or a)Ta. Must it be said, that the reading acofjia indi- 
cates another thought? Most assuredly, if one translates 
^b tVl^ D^'il^ as given in the Dutch version: "Mine ears 
hast thou pierced," in the sense in which the willing slave 
was pinned through the ear to the doorpost of his lord. This 
translation, however, is absolutely untenable, simply because 
this never could or can be said of the D^31t< (ears) in the 
dual. The only correct translation is : Mine ears hast thou 
digged, in the sense of opened, i.e. Thou hast prepared me 
for the service of obedience. For this thought the expres- 
sion " a body hast thou prepared me " would do just as well, 
after the rule of the "whole for the part." If my thumb 
is' hurt, I can use three forms of expression : my thumb is 
wounded, my finger is wounded, or my hand is hurt. For 
the preparation of the ear can be put : the preparation of the 
body; provided both are taken in the sense that this, physico- 
symbolically, points to spiritual obedience, which is also to 
be accomplished in outward things. That in Heb. x. 5, body 
is taken in this sense appears from verse 9, where the exegesis 
from Ps. xl. 7 is used: " Lo, I come to do thy will," i.e. 
to obey. And that it is intended as the actual explanation 
of the "a body hast thou prepared me," appears from the 
additional words : " He taketh away the first (the burnt 
offerings and offerings for sin) that He may establish the 
second (the complete sacrifice of obedience)." The atoning 
act of Christ's sacrifice lay not in the crucifixion of His body 
by itself, but in His will to obey; as it is expressly stated in 
verse 10: by which will (not by which body) we have been 
sanctified. The question whether the following, "through 



452 § 78. THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES [Div. Ill 

the offering of the body of Jesus Christ," does not refer back 
to the body in verse 5, can never be answered with certainty. 
Even if this inference is accepted, it can never follow from 
this that in verse 5 the incarnation, i.e. the providing of the 
body for His self-sacrifice, is meant. Rather the contrary ; 
for the exegesis which, as we saw, makes verse 9 follow 
immediately upon verse 8, affirms the opposite. The unde- 
niable fault in the translation, or at least in the copies, lent 
itself easily to express, nevertheless, the original meaning of 
the first author in Ps. xl. 6, and this accounts for the fact 
that in a Greek copy this Greek reading does not need to 
be changed necessarily to the letter according to the Hebrew 
requirement, but can be taken as being equal in sense and 
thought to the original. This would have been indeed unlaw- 
ful in common quotation by another^ but offers not the least 
difficulty since the auctor primarius of Ps. xl. and Heb. x. is 
one and the same. An observation, from which at the same 
time it appears how, in the apostolic circle, they did not 
represent to themselves the authority of the Scripture as a 
petrified power, but as a power flowing forth from an ever- 
vital authority, carrying and ever accompanying the entire 
Scripture. It presented itself differently to them than to 
us. For us this inspiration belongs to the past ; it is an 
ended matter ; we ourselves stand outside of it. In the 
same way the Sanhedrin were under the impression that 
inspiration had died out for as many as four centuries. In 
the apostolic circle, on the other hand, by Jesus' promise that 
the Holy Ghost would resume his working, they were pre- 
pared to entertain a different view, and after the day of Pen- 
tecost they actually lived in another reality. They perceived 
that this same wondrous power, which had worked in former 
times and the product of which was the Scripture, had re- 
sumed its action, even though in a different way. By this 
the apostolic circle lived in the Scripture as in a part of its 
own life. This broke the barrenness of the mechanical con- 
tact, and caused the organic contact to resume its liberating 
process ; and it is in this way that subjectively, from the 
side of the apostles, their liberty in the use of Scripture is 



Chap. II] § 79. SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESULT 453 

explained, as we explained it objectively from tlie identity of 
the author in the quotation and in what was quoted. 

§ 79. Significance of this Result for the Old Testament 

The period in which the opponents of the Christian con- 
fession exegetically misrepresented the Scriptures, in such a 
way that at length they were said to contain their opinions, is 
irrevocably past. In controversies of a sectarian character, 
such dogmatic exegesis may still be resorted to ; in the con- 
flict for or against the Christ as the Son of God, this weapon 
is worn out. Negation has destroyed the gain of this untrue 
position, and now feels itself sufficiently strong to continue 
the undermining of orthodox Christendom without the assist- 
ance of the authority of the Scripture. This we consider no 
loss, since it has rendered the position clear and free. The 
first result is, that one begins by granting that orthodoxy is 
correct in a most important point, which formerly was com- 
bated and derided. Only remember what material was gath- 
ered by the waning rationalistic-supranaturalistic period, by 
which to prove, in an amusingly learned way, that in the Holy 
Scripture Christ appeared nowhere as a Divine person, and 
that there was as little mention in the Scripture of a vicari- 
ous sacrifice made for sinners. This Avas altogether a churchly 
dogma, but no representation of Scripture ; and thus the hope- 
less task was undertaken to exegete all such mysteries out of 
the Scripture. The authority of Christ or of the apostles 
stood too high at the time, in public estimation, to be put 
aside or to be defied. In order to obtain a hearing for one's 
'^free" ideas, it was necessary, at the time, to press the argu- 
ment that the churchly representation Avas forced upon Christ 
and His apostles, but that, on a more accurate exegesis, it 
appeared to be foreign to the Scripture. Whatever of pro- 
test was entered against this, from the side of the orthodox, 
was commonly said to have neither rhyme nor reason. It 
was soon treated with ridicule ; and in some inconceivable 
way the opinion became prevalent that, in all honesty, Jesus 
and His apostles had fostered those very same ideas, which 
eighteen centuries later, in a jaded period of enervated theo- 



454 § 79. SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESULT [Dir. Ill 

logical thought, were sold off as the newest sample of reli- 
gious wisdom. If you pass from the period of negation of 
that time to view its present phase, you observe that this 
breastwork, cast up with so much exertion, is entirely de- 
serted, and that literally no one defends any longer the rep- 
resentation which was then generally accepted. On the 
contrary, opponents and supporters of orthodoxy are now 
fairly well agreed that, in that earlier conflict, upon exegeti- 
cal ground, the orthodox exegetes were right, and that the 
Scripture, as it lies before us, really preaches those mysteries 
then so sharply antagonized. 

This has not been granted, of course, with the purpose of 
accepting those mysteries. This recognition was arrived at 
only after men had become well assured that nothing was to be 
derived from it in the interest of the truth of those mysteries. 
Now it was said that the Scripture itself must be aban- 
doned, and that these mysteries had not been promulgated 
by the Christ, but were attributed to Him by Scripture docu- 
ments of later composition. A da capo, indeed, of the an- 
cient assertion ; only with this difference, that in the earlier 
period battle was given in the domain of the Scripture, and 
now it was turned against that Scripture itself. And when 
this failed of providing a conception of the Christ which 
divested him of all supernatural elements, they have now 
even wrested themselves sufficiently free from his moral au- 
thority, boldly to declare that a certain circle of conceptions 
belonged indeed to Jesus, which nevertheless have ceased 
to be true to us. But even this implies for us a twofold 
gain. First, the gain that, now we may see what the ten- 
dency of the earlier exegetical attack on Christendom was, 
and that in the main the exegesis of the orthodox was cor- 
rect. And secondly, there is the gain that it is no longer 
denied that Jesus and His apostles entertained concep- 
tions concerning several mysteries, which exhibit a clear 
relationship to the orthodox confession — a fact which is 
particularly granted with respect to the conception of 
Jesus and His apostles concerning the Old Covenant. Aside 
from the question whether the further development of the 



Chap. II] FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT 455 

dogma of inspiration does not diverge from that concep- 
tion in more than one particular, and in so far stands 
in need of correction, no one at present will deny that in 
the circle of Jesus and His apostles there was a current 
conception, gainsaid by none, which assigned to the Old 
Testament, as a Holy Book, a normative authority. Even 
those who think that the portrait of Jesus, as the New 
Testament delineates it, allows us only with difficulty to 
form an idea of the figure of the Rabbi of Nazareth which 
lurks behind it, confess that Jesus cannot be represented 
in any other way than as having adopted at this point 
the current opinion of pious Israelites of His times. Even 
the accommodation theory has long since been abandoned. 
But after the frank confession that Jesus shared that 
conception, this fact is emptied of its significance by the 
simple statement that Jesus' opinion on this point has no 
value, — that He Himself, no less than His contemporaries, 
has simply been mistaken. Hence the confession of the 
fact has only become possible at the price of respect for 
Jesus' person. As long as this respect was retained, the fact 
could not be granted. Since this respect has been lost, the 
confession is freely made. 

This reveals at the same time the weighty consideration 
which this confession puts in the scale for him who finds 
this respect for Christ as the Son of God in the depths of 
his soul, and to whom, therefore, Jesus shines in the full 
glory of the divine mystery. Can He have been — mistaken, 
mistaken — with respect to holiest things, in what must 
be to us the ground and source of our faith ! Mistaken 
also, therefore, in assigning, on the basis of the Scripture, 
a high Messianic character to Himself ! But the very idea is 
incompatible with the confession of Jesus' Divine nature. 
Erring in what is holy is no mere failure in intellect, but 
betrays a state of ruin of one's whole inner being. In the 
sinner, therefore, a mistake is natural, but not in one who is 
holy. Hence, here you face a dilemma, from the stress of 
which there is no escape. One of two things must follow : 
either, if in the centrum of what is holy Jesus took His stand 



456 § 79. SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESULT [Div. Ill 

upon a lying conception^ then He Himself had no instinct for 
the truths was not God manifest in the fiesh, and could not 
even have been the purely sinless man ; or, if He was " the 
Christ, the Son of the living God," in all things like our- 
selves, sin excepted, then whatever He sealed as true in the 
centrum of what was holy must also be true to him who 
thus believes in his Saviour. Nothing can here be put in 
between. As long as the effort was prosecuted to prove that 
Jesus shared the view of the Scripture of the Old Testament 
held by the more liberal tendency at the beginning of 
this century, inspiration could be abandoned without the 
loss of one's Christ. Since, on the other hand, this effort 
has suffered total shipwreck, and since it is, and must be, 
historically acknowledged that Christ viewed the Scripture 
in about the same way in which the Church of all ages has 
done this in her symbols, the conflict against this view of 
the Scripture has become directly a conflict against the Christ 
Himself. He who breaks in principle with that ancient view 
of the Scripture cuts the cord of faith, which bound him 
to that Christ as his Lord and his God. And he who can- 
not refrain from kneeling low before his Saviour cannot break 
with the ground of faith in the Scripture, as Jesus Himself 
has sealed it. 

The tendency, which becomes more and more manifest, to 
withdraw oneself from the Scripture into an individualistic 
mysticism and from the Christ to go back to the Holy Spirit, 
cannot be maintained for one moment by a worshipper of 
Christ in the face of the fact that Jesus acknowledged the 
Scripture. For, even though we take them as historical 
witnesses merely, the Scriptures of the New Testament 
afford abundant proof that Christ knew this mysticism of 
the Holy Spirit and honored it, but even in the Gospel 
of John, in which this mysticism is most often mentioned, 
almost more strongly than in the Synoptics, you find the 
conviction of Jesus expressed that He is bound to the Script- 
ures ; bound not only for His conceptions, but bound for His 
person, for the program of His life and passion, and for the 
future of glory which awaits Him. Hence the desire to 



Chap. II] FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT 457 

remain orthodox in one's Christology, and so far as the way 
of knowledge is concerned to withdraw oneself into mystical 
territory, in order to be able to make concessions in the domain 
of the Scripture-question, is the fruit of lack of thought, a 
measuring with two measures, and self-contradiction. The 
question is more serious than is surmised by this well-mean- 
ing orthodoxy. The conflict, which is begun in order to rob 
us of the Scripture as Holy Scripture, can have no other 
tendency than to rob us of the Christ. If the Holy Script- 
ure qua talis falls, then Jesus was a man and nothing more, 
who was mistaken in the centrum of what was holy, and 
who consequently can neither escape from the fellowship of 
sin, nor yet in what is holiest and tenderest be your absolute 
guide. 

It is not true that on this point there could be error in 
Jesus, without detriment to His person and His character as 
authority in what is holy. In history entirely innocent 
inaccuracies are certainly possible, which, so far from doing 
harm, rather bring to light the free utterance of life above 
notarial mannerism. But of this character, Jesus' error 
could have been least of all. For three reasons. In the 
first place, because, if the historical-critical school is right, 
there is not merely a dispute about the author and the origin 
of several books, but in the Old Testament you frequently 
encounter deceit and falsehood. There are not only sev- 
eral representations of facts and events which are fictitious, 
but many pretensions, also, to Divine revelation which are 
feigned, and the intrusion of writings under other names 
which are nothing but " prophecies after the event," but 
which nevertheless present themselves as authentic prophecy. 
Whether this deceit and this falsehood is the personal work 
of one individual or the result of tradition, makes no differ- 
ence ; falsehood does not cease to be falsehood if it is gener- 
ated gradually in the course of time. And however much one 
may talk of " pious fraud," even that can only be represented 
as free from deceit when the rule is adopted that the end 
sanctifies the means. Grant that you may make no scientific 
claims on Jesus, which fall outside of the scope of His person 



458 § 79. SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESULT [Div. Ill 

and time, may this ever authorize one to deny Him also the 
instinct for truth ? And yet He must have been entirely 
devoid of this instinct, if He could have taken such a struct- 
ure of fictitious and designedly untrue representations as the 
ground of that truth, which He confessed and for which He 
died. 

In the second place, such error could not have been in- 
nocently made for the reason stated above, viz. that Jesus 
accepted the entire program of His life at the hand of the 
Scripture. The Old Testament Scripture had a meaning for 
Jesus which it could have had for no other, either before or 
after Him. From the fatal standpoint of an error no other 
conclusion can be formed than that in the program of the 
'Ebed Jahvah, of the Messiah, and of the man of sorrows 
Jesus wrongly saw the plan of His own existence, public 
appearance, passion and glory, and that He labored under an 
illusion when, on the ground of the Scripture, He conformed 
Himself to this. His great life-work, then, is no result of a 
Divine impulse, but a role in a drama which He found 
projected by some one else, and of which He imagined Him- 
self to be the chief actor. Thus if this error is granted, 
it entails with it a condemnation of Jesus' whole interpreta- 
tion of His task. Not only His interpretation of the Script- 
ure, but His entire position in history has then been one 
mistake. He then has walked in a dream. A beautiful 
dream wrought into His phantasy by the Old Testament. 
By this, however. His life and sacrifice forfeit the serious 
character of being a moral reality sprung from God. 

And the third reason, why the idea of an innocent mistake 
cannot be entertained, is evident from the very conflict of 
our times. At first the Old Testament was antagonized by 
means of the New, in order on ethical grounds to exhibit 
the lower standard of the Old. The religious and ethical 
representations of the Old Testament must be repelled, in 
order that Christ and the New Testament might find an 
entrance as the principium of what was higher and holier. 
Now one does not hesitate on the ground of his own religious 
and moral sense to apply his criticism to Christ and the New 



Chap. II] FOR THE OLD TESTAMENT 459 

Testament. But even if we pass this second suggestion by, 
it is alleged that in the centrum of the religious and moral 
life there yawns an abyss between the Old Testament and 
the Christ. Notwithstanding all this the attempt is being 
made to make it appear as though it had merely been an 
innocent mistake in Christ that for eighteen centuries by 
precept and example He has bound His followers and con- 
fessors to the authority of that Old Testament. But is it 
not absurd to qualify in the Founder of your religion, as 
Jesus is called, as of no importance a mistake which for ages 
has led millions upon millions astray, and still continues to 
do this ? We may safely prophesy that after not many days 
the stress of the dilemma, which we here face, will be real- 
ized and generally acknowledged. Either Jesus' view of the 
Scripture is the true one, and then we should kneel in His 
presence ; or Jesus' view of the Scripture is one enormous 
mistake, in which case the Rabbi of Nazareth can no longer 
be the absolute guide along the way of faith. 

We accept this dilemma the sooner since it determines 
most definitely our point of departure. There are two kinds 
of people, thus we wrote, in or outside of the circle of palin- 
genesis, and connected therewith there are two kinds of con- 
sciousness, subjectively with or without illumination, and 
objectively with or without Holy Scripture. Applied to the 
above-named dilemma, this affirms: That if by palingenesis 
you stand vitally related to the Christ as " the head of the 
body," the relation between your consciousness and the Holy 
Scripture is born from this of itself. But if that relation of 
the palingenesis does not bind you to the Christ of God as 
head of the body of the new humanity, you cannot kneel 
before Him in worship, neither can the Scripture be to you a 
Holy Scripture. The scientific form, in which your confes- 
sion of the Scripture will cast itself, we do not consider here. 
No one, able to think and to ponder, has ever come either to 
palingenesis, to faith in the Christ as the Son of God, or 
to the acceptance of the Scripture, as the result of scientific 
investigation. Faith is of a different kind, and can never 
be plucked as fruit from the branches of science. Faith 



460 §80. THE INSPIRATION OF [Div. Ill 

in, as well as the rejection of, the Christ and the Scripture, 
i.e. of a Logos embodied in the flesh and embodied in writ- 
ing (^evo-apK(Ofievo<; and eyypacfyo^^^ springs from the root of 
our spiritual existence. Hence it csmnot be that by nature 
every one accepts the Christ and the Holy Scripture. The 
antithesis cannot remain wanting between those who believe 
and reject. It lies in the very nature of every intervenient 
process, which does not find its rise in the natural princi- 
pium of the creation, but in a special principium that is bent 
upon recreation. The very nature of special grace brings 
with it that by one it must be accepted, but also by another 
be rejected. Faith eannot belong to all. As soon as rejec- 
tion stands no longer over against faith, special grace has 
reached its end, and by the parousia passes over into the 
then glorified natural principium. This was not felt for 
many years, because faith on the Scripture floated on tradi- 
tion only, and became thereby unspiritual. The apostasy 
from the Christ and from the Scripture is therefore nothing else 
than the falling away from this traditional position, which for 
a long time had no more spiritual root. Now only, thanks to 
the simultaneous conflict against Christ and the Scripture, 
the great dictum, that Christ is set for the rising up but also 
for the falling of many (Luke ii. 34), also for those who are 
outside of Israel, begins to be realized as truth. 

§ 80. The Inspiration of the New Testament 

The Scripture of the New Testament is not so directly 
covered by the authority of Christ and His apostles as that 
of the Old Covenant. The Law and the Prophets formed 
a Scripture which already existed, and concerning which, 
therefore, Jesus' verdict and use can give a final explanation ; 
but the New Testament did not yet exist, and therefore could 
not be subjected to judgment in the circle of Jesus. The 
absolute and immediate authority which the Bishop of 
Rome claims as vicar of Christ and head of the Church lacks 
the Divine seal, which it needs in order to impress the 
Divine stamp upon the Scripture of the New Testament. 
The absolute authority necessary for such a sealing, outside 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 461 

of US, is here wanting. Our fixed point of departure, there- 
fore, does not lie in the New^ but in the Old^ Testament. 
The Old Testament is to us the fixed point of support, and the 
New cannot legitimate itself other than as the complement 
and crown of the Old, postulated by the Old, assumed and 
prophesied by Christ, actually come, and by the continuity 
of faith accepted in the Church of Christ. A certain paral- 
lel with the standing of the authority of the Old Testament 
before Jesus' appearance is here not to be denied. Even 
though Jesus' decisive witness concerning the Scripture then 
in existence lays for us the firmest objective foundation on 
which its authority rests, it may nevertheless not be lost 
from sight that respect for this authority did not originate 
first by means of Jesus' coming, but was already preva- 
lent before He was manifest in the flesh. Christ had merely 
to connect Himself with what existed, and put His seal to 
an authority that was universally recognized. The authority 
of the Scripture of the Old Covenant arose of itself even as 
that of the New Testament. It was, as Jesus found it, the 
result of organic factors which had worked in upon the 
people of God in the Old Dispensation ; an authority which 
only gradually had been firmly established, and did not main- 
tain itself in an absolute sense, except through conflict and 
strife, over against the pretension of the Apocrypha and 
other influential writings, but at length prevailed univer- 
sally within a sharply bounded domain. As a parallel to the 
rise of the authority of the New Testament this is of value 
to us, because it shows that such an authority can establish 
itself gradually by psychical factors and in organic connec- 
tion with the life of the people of God, and in such a way 
that the Christ ratifies it afterwards as an entirely lawful 
and valid authority. From this the possibility also is evi- 
dent that in a proper way, without outward legitimation, 
such an authority may be imposed as of itself, and that after- 
wards it can appear to have been entirely lawfully estab- 
lished. Thus there is nothing strange in it, that in a 
similarly unmarked way the Scripture of the New Testament 
gradually acquired the authority which it has since exercised. 



462 § 80. THE INSPIRATION OP [Div. Ill 

From the psychological point of view the process of the rise 
of this authority, both with the New and with the Old 
Testament, is one. The description of this process is the 
task of the science of Canonics, and therefore lies outside of 
our scope. But the inner necessity needs to be indicated 
with which the Old called for the New Testament, and how 
this necessity has been universally realized. 

We begin with the latter. Consider then how difficult it 
must have been at first for the pious mind, to add to the 
Holy Scripture, consisting as it then did of the Old Testa- 
ment, a new part, with the claim of equal authority. An 
absolute boundary line separated the Old Testament from 
every other writing. Even the conflict with the Apocrypha 
had ceased. And now the idea arises, of placing all sorts 
of other writings, which lack every mark of antiquity, and 
are of very recent date, on a line with this Holy Script- 
ure, even with respect to authority, and yet this idea meets 
with no opposition, but enters as of itself ; and while at the 
same time all sorts of other writings are circulated, one sees 
in the main very soon a boundary line drawn between what 
commends itself as clothed with that authority, and what 
does not. What are one hundred years in such a process 
of spiritual development? And not much more than one 
century has passed after Jesus' ascension, before a com- 
plement for the Old Testament has formed itself, begins to 
run by its side, finds recognition, and comes into sacred use. 
And this went on so unobservedly and of itself, that al- 
though all sorts of controversies arose concerning the ques- 
tion, whether this or that book should be adopted, yet of 
a fundamental controversy against the idea itself, of adding 
a New Testament to the Old, there is absolutely no trace 
discoverable. Reaction against this idea as such proceeded, 
and very reasonably, from the side of the Jews alone, but 
was not even suggested in the circle of the Christians. 
They were as controversial then as we are now, and there 
is no difference, however small, dogmatic, ethic, or ecclesias- 
tic, but has been fought for and against from the beginning. 
But no trace of any significance appears anywhere of opposi- 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 463 

tion to the idea itself, that a new Scripture should be added 
to the Old. Hyperspiritualism may have reacted against 
all Scripture, New as well as Old ; but that cannot claim 
our attention here : we speak simply of those, who, while 
loyally subject to the authority of the Old Testament, faced 
the question whether or no a second Scripture, clothed with 
equal authority, should be added to the accepted canon. 
Psychologically one would have expected a negative answer 
to this question from more than one side. Imagine what it 
would mean to you if to your Bible, as it now consists of 
Old and New Testaments, a third volume was to be added, 
clothed with equal authority and of later origin, and you 
perceive at once that reaction against this effort, yea, 
fierce opposition almost, could not be wanting. And yet 
such was the case faced by the church at large at that 
time. Both what was to be added to the Old Testament, 
and that anything should be added, was entirely new to 
them. That, nevertheless, all opposition of any essential 
character and significant influence against this idea as such 
remained wanting, shows indeed that the minds and hearts 
must have been predisposed to the reception of a second 
Scripture ; that the enlightening, when this Scripture arose, 
bound the minds and hearts to it ; and that the appearance 
of the New Testament, so far from sowing unrest in the 
mind, rather produced that natural rest which is enjoyed 
when what was incomplete in itself obtains its natural com- 
plement. And this sense was so general that not only the 
orthodox but also the heterodox tendency, as far as it moved 
in the bed of the Christian Church, supported the rise of 
this new Scripture. Even though many efforts went out 
from the side of the heterodox to exclude this or that writ- 
ing, to modify or replace it by another, yet in this very 
effort the general consciousness voiced itself, that an author- 
itative Scripture of the New Testament was a necessity. 
Even though the authority was questioned of certain books, 
or of a part of it, the heretic and the orthodox confessor 
were unanimous in the conviction that the Old Scripture 
called for a New. 



464 §80. THE INSPIRATION OF [Div. Ill 

There was indeed some reaction, but this was aimed exclu- 
sively against the manner how, and not against the matter 
itself. By that reaction against the manner of execution, the 
matter itself was rather strengthened. The adoption of the 
avTLXeyojjLeva was reacted against ; reaction took place for 
the sake of introducing other writings, which did not belong 
to the canon ; to modify the text of universally acknowl- 
edged writings, agreeably to all sorts of heterodoxy : but 
this threefold reaction is but a proof that the conflict was 
waged with reference to certain products of the first Chris- 
tian literature, but very definitely not with reference to 
the acceptance of a new Holy Scripture. That such a man 
as Paul alone wrote perhaps ten times as much as is con- 
tained from his hand in the New Testament, lies in the very 
nature of the case. Is it reasonable to suppose that one 
of the apostles never wrote anything ? How large, then, 
the literary product must have been about one hundred 
years after Jesus' birth. But no proposal was made to 
add the whole of this literary inheritance, not even all the 
apostolic writings, as the complement to the Old Testament. 
There was room for choice, there was room for sifting. 
This will do ; that, not. And in this lies the recognition 
of the distinction between what should and what should 
not be received as authoritative. This certainly was not 
effected mechanically nor conventionally nor scholastically. 
Whatever in the end compiled this Scripture canonically, 
it was not simply human sharp-sightedness, but rather 
Divine providence. Even so, however, it appears from the 
threefold reaction, mentioned above, that with clear con- 
sciousness a second Holy Scripture as such was in view, 
and that the assignment of such high authority to this or 
that book was contested, but not the reality of such an 
authority as such. It is evident that this occasioned a 
period of uncertainty ; but let it be observed that this uncer- 
tainty concerned the whole New Testament only for a very 
short time, and, sooner than could be expected, reduced 
itself to a very small part of it. In that limited sense, 
however, this uncertainty could not remain wanting, for the 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 465 

very reason that such a canonical authority could only be 
the outflow of the finally unanimous and ever spontaneous 
recognition of the churches. A recognition which was 
greatly impeded by the distances between the farthest out- 
lying churches in the West and in the East ; which experi- 
enced still more impediment from the absence of a regular 
communication; and which, in the midst of the confusion 
brought about by persecution and by heterodoxy, could only 
be established as by miracle. And yet the result is that 
persecution had scarcely ceased, and the ecclesiastical bond 
been regulated, and heterodoxy been repressed, when on 
every hand you find the churches in the possession of a 
second Holy Scripture, and the authority of the New 
Testament standing in nothing behind that of the Old. 

This would be inexplicable, if the Old Testament had 
announced itself as exclusive and in itself complete, and 
had not, rather, itself called for a New Testament as its 
complement. The prophetic character of the Old Covenant 
bars out this exclusive point of view. Everything in the 
Old Testament will be nothing but anticipatory, and calls 
for the "age to come" (i^DIl D7I!?). In the estimation of 
all who revered its authority, the entire Old Scripture postu- 
lated a reality which was to come, the shadow of which alone 
was given in the old dispensation. The glimmerings were 
there, the light itself still tarried. One read the prologue ; 
the drama itself was to follow. The pedestal was finished 
for the monument about to be erected, but the figure itself 
was still to be placed upon it. There was a protasis, but 
the apodosis of fulfilment was yet to come. When this 
end, this complementing reality, came, the same problem 
arose as of old. This apodosis, this plerosis, came not in one 
moment of time, immediately to be ended and closed by the 
parousia, but this manifestation was also to be perpetuated, as 
has been the case now nearly twenty centuries. The same 
necessity of the Scripture^ which existed for the manifesta- 
tion of the prophetic dispensation, was here repeated. What 
took place only once, and was to project its energy for cen- 
turies together and to all the ends of the earth, must pass 



466 § 80. THE INSPIRATION OF [Div. Ill 

over into tradition, and this tradition must clothe itself in 
the only conceivable form of human trustworthiness, viz. 
that of the Scriptura. This necessity v^^ould have fallen 
away if the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the mystical 
body of Christ had worked actual holiness and infallibility 
at once. Then, indeed, oral tradition would have been guar- 
anteed against involuntary and wilful falsification. Since, 
however, this is not so, and they who are regenerated must 
struggle till their death with the after-throes of sin, and 
since in the Church of Christ many hypocrites are continu- 
ally numbered with the children of palingenesis, the oral 
tradition was in imminent danger of being falsified. The 
necessitas scripturae^ therefore, to perpetuate the manifesta- 
tion which took place eighteen centuries ago was undeni- 
able. Thus, the content of the Old Testament called for 
the complementing manifestation in Christy and the Scripture 
of the Old Testament for its written complement in the JSTew. 
This holds the more because the manifestation, however 
much it may be plerosis with respect to the prophetical dis- 
pensation of the Old Testament, bears in itself, in its turn, 
an incomplete and therefore a prophetical character. Po- 
tentially the Divine reality is seen in the manifestation of 
Christ, but this will find its actual consummation only in the 
parousia, when the palingenesis shall have worked its effect 
in the universal cosmical sense. Hence, the second manifes- 
tation in Christ calls for a third manifestation in the parou- 
sia. Of this, Paul says, 1 Cor. xv. 24 : " Then cometh the 
end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the 
Father." In the new dispensation, therefore, there is not 
only the manifestation of what was prophesied in Israel, but 
the prophecy, as well, of a manifestation which only comes 
after this. An ethical " It is finished " has been heard from 
Golgotha, but the final " It is come to pass " (Rev. xxi. 6) 
will only be proclaimed after the Parousia. There is also 
a program, therefore, of what lies between the first coming 
of Christ and His return, and an apocalypse of what shall be 
the end ; and as the tradition of what had taken place called 
for the support of writing, from the nature of the case this 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 467 

support was much more necessary for the tradition of what 
was program -like. 

Agreeably to this, we find that Christ Himself postulates 
such a second Holy Scripture. This already appears from 
the charge given by Christ to John on Patmos: " What thou 
seest, write Oypd-s^rov) in a book, and send it unto the Seven 
Churches" (Rev. i. 11), in connection with the strong sense 
in which the meaning of jeypa/jLfjievov appears in the entire 
Apocalypse. But since this ypdyfrov comes in too abruptly- 
mechanically, occurs in an avTcXeyofjievov^ and refers merely 
to one single book, we point rather to the position to which 
Jesus exalts the apostolate. With respect to this, we see 
that Christ indeed took measures to assure the durability of 
His work, by which to realize the end of His mission. No 
trace is found with Jesus of a spiritualistic-mystical laisser- 
aller. He institutes the apostolate, attaches to it a definite 
authority, and commissions this apostolate with a definite 
task. With respect to our present subject, this task is two- 
fold: (1) the appearing as witnesses of the manifestation 
which they had seen ; and (2) the proclaiming of things to 
come. This double task was imposed upon them, not merely 
with respect to those who were then alive, before whom they 
should stand and preach by word of mouth, but with refer- 
ence to "all nations," in those nations to all believers, and 
for those believers "to the end of the world." Now put 
this together, and how could the apostles bring this witness 
to all nations and through all ages, except either by not 
dying, or, since they died even very early, by the instru- 
mentality of writing? 

That Christ gave a call to the apostolate not merely to bring 
the Gospel to those who were then alive, but to be until the 
end his authoritative witnesses to all believers, is already ob- 
servable from John xvii. 20, where Jesus prays, not only for 
the apostles themselves, " but for them also that believe on 
him through their word." That this refers to all believers 
among all nations and of all ages lies in the nature of the 
case, since the intercession of Christ applies to all his peo- 
ple; but it appears, moreover, very clearly from the connec- 



468 §80. THE INSPIRATION OF [Div. Ill 

tion. There follows, indeed, a double "that" (Jva') : (1) that 
they may all be one, and (2) that the world may believe 
that thou didst send me. It is self-evident that the unity 
of believers cannot refer merely to the immediate converts 
of that time, and in the same way that the cosmos of all 
ages must receive this witness. Now look at verse 14, 
where Jesus declares that He has given this Logos as a 
word of God first to the apostles, and that it is that Logos 
which, by the apostolate, is to be brought within the reach of 
the world of all ages, and it follows from this that in the mind 
of Jesus this apostolic witness must remain available in a 
fixed form after their death. Entirely in the same sense, 
therefore, in which in Matt, xxviii. 19 he extends the sig- 
nificance of the apostolate to all the nations and till the end 
of the world. That the apostles themselves saw the excep- 
tional significance of the apostolate is shown among other 
things by John in his First Epistle, i. 1-3, in which he de- 
clares of himself and of his fellow-apostles : (1) that the^ 
received the manifestation so realistically that he even says : 
" and our hands have handled ; " and (2) that they were 
called to preach this manifestation ; and (3) that the fruit 
of this preaching must be the adoption of converts into the 
fellowship of the apostolate, because by this fellowship only 
could they enter into the mystical union with God and His 
Christ. We even see Paul taking measures, as long as the 
Scriptura still tarries, to fill in the gap, when to Timothy he 
writes : " And the things which thou hast heard from me 
among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful 
men, who shall be able to teach others also" (2 Tim. ii. 
2). The conception lies expressed very clearly in this that 
the apostolate brings something to the world that is to re- 
main for all time the fixed and reliable tradition. 

This significance of the apostolate extends itself even 
farther, when notice is taken of those utterances of Jesus 
contained in John xiv. 25, 26 ; xv. 26, 27 ; xvi. 12, etc. 
In John xvi. 12-15, the difference is clearly anticipated, 
which later on was to assert itself between the gospel (^rb 
evayyeXcov) and the apostolate (o aTrocrroXo?) . The task 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 469 

of the apostles was to be twofold : (1) as witnesses of what 
they had seen and heard, they were to embody the record 
of the life and work of Jesus upon the earth in a well- 
guaranteed tradition ; but (2) also, to reveal to the world 
what, after His ascension^ Jesus would testify and make 
known unto them. Not as though this revelation after 
Jesus' ascension should advance, in a Montanistic sense, be- 
yond Jesus, for of this Jesus Himself declares, " I have yet 
many things to say unto you," and the only reason why as 
yet He did not reveal them was " that the apostles were not 
yet able to bear it." This later revelation, indeed, will pro- 
ceed in a different way, and come to them by the Holy 
Ghost, i.e. by way of inspiration, but this will not render 
the character of this later revelation different in kind ; for 
the Lord declares emphatically that the Holy Ghost will take 
from the things that are His, " What things soever he shall 
hear, these shall he speak," and thus only be able "to declare 
unto you the things that are to come." This excludes, 
therefore, the representation that this working of the Holy 
Spirit should consist in mystical leadings. Definite mate- 
rial is here spoken of, which is present in the consciousness 
of the Mediator ; which purposely He does not as yet impart 
to His apostles ; and which, after His ascension, the Holy 
Ghost will borrow as content from the Mediator-conscious- 
ness (He shall take of mine), in order by inspiration to com- 
municate it to the apostles. This is so strongly emphasized 
that Jesus repeats the selfsame thought three times : (1) in 
the thirteenth verse, " He shall not speak from himself, but 
what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak " ; 
(2) in the fourteenth verse, " He shall glorify me : for he 
shall take of mine"; and (3) in the fifteenth verse, "there- 
fore said I, that he taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto 
you." Evidently no mystical sensations are here spoken of 
which were to be quickened by the Holy Spirit, but thoughts 
and purposes are referred to which were present in the con- 
sciousness of the Mediator, and which are indicated by the 
"of mine." Of these thoughts^ it is said, "He will guide 
you into all the truth " ; and of these purposes^ " He will de- 



470 § 80. THE INSPIRATION OF [Div. Ill 

clare unto you the things that are to come." And in both 
cases it applies to a definite content, which is obtained by 
hearing^ and after that is transmitted by declaring. From 
which it likewise follows that no reference is made here to 
what Jesus spake after His resurrection, but exclusively to 
that which only later on should enter into their conscious- 
ness by inspiration. On the other hand, John xiv. 25, 26, 
views what we call the gospel (to evayyeXtov') . Here is 
mention, not of what was still to be revealed, but of what 
had been revealed unto them, and by a failing memory 
might escape them. Against this the Holy Spirit shall 
watch, since " He shall teach you all things, and bring to 
your remembrance all that I [Christ] said unto you," a 
process of inspiration, as will be seen later, of an entirely 
different character, referring to the past, even as the inspi- 
ration of John xvi. 12, to the things that are to come. And 
if the question is raised how this double tradition, which the 
apostolate was to bequeath to the Church of all ages, would 
find an entrance and belief, John xv. 26, 27 gives answer ; 
for their witness would be accompanied and supported by 
the witness of the Holy Spirit in the heart of believers. 

With the holy apostle Paul, however, an exception took 
place. With him there could be no remembrance by the Holy 
Ghost, because he had not followed Jesus. Therefore, Paul 
declares that the exalted Mediator had also revealed the Gos- 
pel to him. This, indeed, is the only meaning that can be 
attached to his statement in 1 Cor. xi. 23, '' For I received 
of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you," which 
testimony he repeats in 1 Cor. xv. 3 almost literally, where 
he treats of the resurrection of the Lord. This is likewise 
referred to by what he says in 1 Cor. vii. 12, " But to the 
rest say I, not the Lord," which, from the nature of the 
case, may not be taken as though his advice following 
should possess no Divine authority, but as indicating that 
in His revelation of His earthly appearance the Christ had 
given him no direction concerning this, so that with refer- 
ence to this the apostle speaks, not from the remembrance, 
but from the revelation of the Holy Ghost ; which repre- 



Chap. II] THE NEW TESTAMENT 471 

sentation, with the apostolic Scripture before one's eyes, may 
not be dismissed as being far-fetched. With so many words, 
indeed, Paul testifies in Gal. i. 11, 12, " For I make known to 
you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by 
me, that it is not after man. For neither did I receive it 
from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through 
revelation of Jesus Christ." For the matter in hand, how- 
ever, this makes no difference. With Paul, also, there is a 
difference between what is revealed to him of the past, and 
what is given him by inspiration concerning the thoughts and 
events^ the knowledge of which was given by Jesus to His 
Church after His ascension, through the Holy Spirit. 

The inspiration itself of the apostles will be considered in 
a separate paragraph. For the purpose in hand it is suffi- 
cient to have shown : (1) that the Old Testament postulated 
a second revelation, Avhich could only come later ; (2) that 
this second revelation also was destined for all nations and 
every age, and on this ground called for documentation ; 
(3) that up to the time of Jesus' ascension apart only of this 
second revelation had come, while another part still tarried, 
and that the end can only come with the parousia ; (4) that 
Jesus instituted His apostolate as a definite company (^kolvco- 
vCa)^ and imposed upon this apostolate the task of being 
His witnesses until the end of the world; (5) that Jesus, 
in order that they might accomplish this task, promised 
and granted them a double inspiration of the Holy Ghost ; 
first that of remembrance (vTro/jLvrjaL^'), and secondly that 
of guidance (^oSriyrjcrt^') and of declaring (^avayyeXta') ; and 
(6) that since Christ honored the Old Testament as an 
authoritative Scripture for the confirmation and documenta- 
tion of the revelation which preceded His advent, the idea 
was given of itself to have a similar Scripture do service for 
the confirmation and documentation of this second revelation. 

The result, indeed, puts the seal upon this. Such a second 
Scripture did arise of itself. This second Scripture legiti- 
mized itself as a New Testament to supplement the Old Tes- 
tament within a relatively short time, and has fused with it 
into one whole in the consciousness of the Church. There is 



472 § 80. INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT [Div. Ill 

no question here of a mechanical compulsion. The apostles 
had no thought of preparing a book which, under the seal of 
their name and common authority, was to be handed down 
to posterity. The tie braided itself entirely organically 
between this new Scripture and the ever broader circle of 
believers. It was the Holy Spirit Himself who on one side 
caused the component parts of this Scripture to originate, 
and on the other side secured the choice of these docu- 
ments in the churches. The hesitancy, which arose with 
reference to a number of these documents, shows with what 
unanimity the others obtained an immediate entrance, and 
how conscientiously the work was undertaken. The idea 
that such a second Scripture must come encountered no 
opposition, but was alive in the heart as an idea and a 
presumption, before it showed itself above the horizon. 
Orthodox and heterodox united in this Scripture-idea, and 
the result was, that in proportion to the measure in which 
the oral tradition changed color and the spread of the church 
threatened its unity, the significance of this second Scripture 
was more and more felt, until at length there was a complete 
documentation, not only of the shadows (o-/ctat) but also of 
the fulfilment QirXripodcn^)^ which was acknowledged by the 
churches in all parts of the earth as clothed with Divine 
authority. This acknowledgment implied that the authority 
assigned to the New Testament was understood in the same 
sense as the authority attached by Christ to the Old Testa- 
ment. To the sense of faith both soon formed one organic 
whole. Whatever dominion the Old Testament had, that was 
the dominion that was attributed to the New Testament. 
And though it is entirely true, in the strict sense, that 2 Tim. 
iii. 16, and similar utterances, were written with exclusive 
reference to the Old Testament, yet the Church was entirely 
right when it applied this as a matter of fact to the New 
Testament as well, since indeed, after the organic fusion of 
both, one and the same life flowed through both parts of the 
Scripture, and in both the Divine Word was communicated 
unto us. No mistake was made even when they went 
farther ; and in the treatment of the organic life of the 



Chap. II] § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY 478 

Scripture, utterances from the Psalms were also applied to 
the New Testament. It was indeed well known that origin- 
ally such utterances could refer merely to what was then 
written ; but it was understood that the same physiological 
law for one and the same life is valid in all its stages, and 
that for this reason the explanation of what had already 
appeared on this plant of the Scripture applied also to the 
branches which sprang from it at a later period. 

This physiological unity of the organic life of the Scripture 
demands that attention shall likewise be paid to the instru- 
mental diversity by which it came into being. The unity 
lies in the auctor primarius, but this can only be fully known 
when the needed light is thrown upon the rich multiformity 
in the auetores seeundarii. Let attention, therefore, now be 
centred upon that instrumental side of inspiration. 

§ 81. Unity and Multiplicity 

The Holy Scripture offers itself to faith as a unity^ and it 
is that unity which our old theologians called its essentia^ i.e. 
that which makes it Scripture. This unity becomes apparent 
when Jesus simply quotes it with an " It is written," and 
when, by His authority likewise, the Holy Scripture becomes 
the name by which it is called. In this sense the Scripture 
is the Word of God, and every distinction, by which we 
have only a Word of God in the Scripture, is a denial of its 
essentia or being. 

This representation of its unity is not only right but of 
highest right for faith, and if it did not give rise to such ter- 
rible abuse, it might serve, if necessary, as the sole sufficient 
one in the realm of faith. Since, however, this representa- 
tion tempts one so readily to quote every sentence which 
occurs in the Scripture, in whatever place, as forming by 
itself a Divine saying, and thus to destroy the organic char- 
acter of revelation, it is the mission of the church to keep 
alive also the sense of the multiformity of the Holj^ Scripture. 
Even though it is entirely true that Jesus briefly quotes with 
an "It is written," and does this also when a word is quoted 
which in the Old Testament does not occur immediately as 



474 § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY [Div. Ill 

a saying of the Lord, yet with Jesus such an " It is written " 
betrays always a spiritual significance. A word of Satan is 
not an '' It is written," neither is every saying of men, nor 
even every utterance of God's ambassadors. Hence, in order 
to be able to quote Scripture authoritatively, the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit is necessary, to impart the spiritual tact of 
distinguishing the gold from the ore. One needs only to turn 
to the book of Job in order to perceive how much spiritual 
maturity is required to know what may or may not be quoted 
from among the numerous utterances of Satan, of Job, of his 
three friends and of Elihu, with an " It is written." Every- 
thing that grows on and in the stalk is by no means wheat, 
and especially with finer plants it always takes the eye of the 
connoisseur to distinguish fruit from what is no fruit. Upon 
the multiplicity^ therefore, in the case of the Holy Scripture, 
emphasis must also be put, not from the desire to exalt the 
human factor, but to keep the gold vein of the Divine factor 
pure ; and this will do no harm, provided its organic unity, 
and not its multiformity, is chosen as the starting-point 
from which to arrive at its unity. In all organic life unity 
in the germ is first, from which multiplicity spreads itself. 
By fastening leaf, blossom and branch to each other you 
never form a living plant. He who, in the case of the 
Scripture, thus begins with the multiplicity of the human 
factor, and tries in this way to reach out after its unity will 
never find it, simply because he began with its denial in 
principle. 

It was not mistakenly, therefore, that a predestined Bible 
was spoken of in Reformed circles, by which was understood 
that the preconceived form of the Holy Scripture had been 
given already from eternity in the counsel of God, in which 
at the same time all events, means and persons, by which 
that preconceived form would be realized in our actual life, 
were predestined. Hence in the course of ages all sorts of 
events take place, and persons appear who do not know of 
each other, and in the midst of these events these several 
XDersons are induced, without the knowledge of a higher 
purpose, to commit to writing certain facts, thoughts and 



Chap. II] § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY 475 

perceptions. These persons also write other documents, and 
other persons among their contemporaries write as well as 
they. But, nevertheless, all those other writings are lost, or 
are put aside, while those special documents, which were 
destined and ordered of God to compose His Holy Scripture, 
are not merely saved, but are made honorable, are compiled, 
and gradually attain that authority which He had ordained 
for these Scriptures. Thus, according to a plan, known to 
God alone, a structure is gradually raised on which in the 
course of many ages different persons have labored without 
agreement, and without ever having seen the whole. No 
one of the children of men had conceived the plan, to com- 
pile such a Scripture ; not one had added his contribution 
with premeditation, nor exhorted others to supplement his 
contribution with theirs. Thus the plan of the Holy Script- 
ure was hidden, back of human consciousness, in the con- 
sciousness of God, and He it is, who in His time has so 
created each of these writers, so endowed, led and impelled 
them, that they have contributed what He wanted, and what 
after His plan and direction was to constitute His Scripture. 
The co7iception, therefore, has not gone out of men, but out 
of ^ God ; and it was in connection with this conception, that 
in every document and by every writer in the course of the 
ages there should be contributed that very thing, of such a 
content and in such a form, as had been aimed at and willed 
by God. There is no chance, and hence this composition 
and compilation of human writings are not accidental, but 
predetermined. And this whole has thus been ordained, and 
in virtue of this fore-ordination has thus been executed, as 
it had to be, in order to respond to the spiritual needs and 
wants of the Church of God in every age and among every 
nation. For, of course, in the strict sense it may be said 
that every writing is predestined, and this we readily 
grant; but when our Reformed circles spoke of a "pre- 
destined Bible " they intended to convey thereby the idea, 
of a medium of grace, which was taken up as a link in 
the counsel of God for the salvation of His elect. In the 
accomplishment of this purpose lay the justification of the 



476 §81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY [Div. Ill 

Scripture, and the result has fully shown that this wondrous 
book contains within itself the mystery of being suited to 
every nation, new to every age, profound for the scholar and 
rich in comforts for the meek. By this Scripture the world 
has been changed, and thanks to its power a moral authority 
has been established among the nations, of which it was cor- 
rectly prophesied by Kant, that though it might be destroyed 
in part, it can never be superseded by another equally im- 
mutable authority. In this universality this Scripture works 
an effect which is beyond calculation, and its influence is not 
capable of analysis. There it lies in the midst of the Church 
and of the nations. A certain mystical tie unites the life of 
the soul to it, as a phenomenon. It makes thereby an im- 
pression, and by that impression it fashions spirits. It does 
this in very different ways, and no theory is able to trace or to 
interpret the working of that impression. Its light and its 
glow radiate solemnly, and the result is that the coldness of 
human hearts retreats and the darkness is driven back. 
Such is its majesty, and it is by that majesty, that as one 
mighty ^i^paivTai^ as one overpowering word of God, it 
masters our sense of self. In that unity it shines as the 
Holy Scripture. 

He who believes in God cannot represent it otherwise 
than that there must be a Word of God, one coherent ut- 
terance of His Divine thought. Not in that anthropomor- 
phic sense in which we men string word to word, but, in 
such a sense as becomes the Eternal One, who is not subject 
to a succession of moments, in the rich and full unity of 
the conception. And in that sense the Holy Scripture 
speaks of the Logos of Grod, which is something entirely 
different from his spoken words (^prjfjLaTo), and which in 
itself indicates merely the psyche of the thought, inde- 
pendent of its somatic clothing in language and sound. If 
man is created after the Image of God, and thus disposed to 
communion with the Eternal, then this Word of Grod also 
must be able to be grasped by man ; and even after his fall 
into sin, this Word of God must go out to him, though 
now in a way suited to his condition. This takes place now, 



Chap. II] § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY 477 

since man has received being and consciousness^ in two ways. 
In the way of the esse by the incarnation of the Logos, 
and in the way of consciousness as this selfsame Logos 
becomes embodied in the Scripture. Both are the spoken 
Word (A0709 TTjOoc^o/ji/co?) ; but in the one case it is the 
Word ''become flesh" (o-apf yevofievo^^, in the other "writ- 
ten" (€77/3a(^o9), and these two cover each other. Christ 
is the whole Scripture, and the Scripture brings the to esse 
of the Christ to our consciousness. Care, however, must 
be taken to guard against the mistake, that our conscious- 
ness can only be wrought upon by the spoken word. Very 
certainly this takes place with spoken words, and the Holy 
Scripture emphasizes the fact that God the Lord, who gave 
us language and in language our human word. Himself made 
use of those words by which directly to address us. Sinai 
bears witness to this. But besides through the ear, our con- 
sciousness is also affected through the ei/e, both by real 
revelation in events and by symbolical shadow and manifesta- 
tion ; and it is by these three means, first, the spoken word, 
secondly, the common or extraordinary inworking in the real 
world, and third, the shadows, types and figures, that God 
the Lord has brought to pass, that His thought Logos, His 
divine Word, has been conveyed to sinners. Only when in 
this wise these spoken words, signs and shadows are taken 
together and joined in their organic relation, can the rich 
revelation of the Word of God be viewed in its unity. Not 
merely the spoken words, but also the signs, and not merely 
these two, but likewise the shadows, in the relation in which 
God Himself has revealed them, together give us the Word of 
God. He only who places himself under the full impression 
of this majestic whole, can and may say, that the Word of 
God has been revealed to him. For this reason the Logos 
of God is both violated and maimed, when it is sought in the 
spoken words only, and when consequently one speaks of the 
ivords of God in the Scripture. The Scripture as a whole, 
as it lies before us as a unit, offers us the organic whole of 
this threefold revelation of God, and he only who takes up in 
himself that ivhole, has in himself the image of the full reve- 



478 §81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY [Div. Ill 

lation of God, and consequently possesses the Word of Crod. 
That God's Word is not in the Scripture, but that the Script- 
ure itself is the photograph of God's Word, does not refer 
therefore to its formal inspiration, but simply states, that you 
cannot miss any part of that Scripture without marring the 
picture, the photograph, the etching, the copy, which holds be- 
fore our eyes the full image of God's word. To this unity 
faith stretches forth its hands. From this unity of conception 
flows the Divine authority, to which the child of God gives 
itself captive. How this unity hides in that wondrous book 
remains a mystery which refuses all explanation. Only 
when you stand before it, at the proper distance, and with 
the faith-eye of the connoisseur you gaze upon its multipli- 
city of tints and lines, the full image discovers itself stereo- 
scopically to you. Then you see it. Then you can no 
longer not see it. The eye of your soul has caught it. 
In all its glory it speaks to you. 

But, of course, the multiplicity of that appearance does 
not cease to exist on account of that unity. The Holy 
Scripture is not abstractly transcendent. It is this in some 
apocalyptical parts, but by no means when taken as a whole. 
And as a protest must be entered against every effort to take 
the revelation of God's consciousness to man as being simply 
immanent, as though it consisted merely of the unnoticed influ- 
ences upon our inner being, equally strong must our protest 
be against the effort to interpret the Holy Scripture as a 
transcendent phenomenon standing outside of our human 
reality. Here, also, the parallel maintains itself between 
the incarnate and the written Logos. As in the Mediator 
the Divine nature weds itself to the human, and appears 
before us in its form and figure, so also the Divine factor 
of the Holy Scripture clothes itself in the garment of our 
form of thought, and holds itself to our human reality. 
This is what our old theologians meant by their combina- 
tion of the first and secondary authors, but it is something 
that goes yet farther ; for even when, on Sinai, God with 
His own finger engraves in human words His law upon 
the tables of stone, the revelation remains not absolutely 



Chap. II] § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY 479 

transcendent, but makes use here, also, of the human as 
instrument. All the shadoAVS and types bear the same 
mixed character. All of sacred history rests upon the 
same entwining of both factors. And even in miracles, 
the Divine factor remains never purely transcendent, but 
in order to reveal Himself, ever enters into human reality. 
Hence, in all parts of the rich scenery interpreted to you 
by the Word of God, it is ever the transcendent, Divine 
factor, which exhibits itself to your eye in a human form or 
in a human reality. If, now, in order to be the bearer of the 
Divine factor, that human form or that human reality were 
carried up to its perfection, no contradiction would be born 
from this in the appearance ; but this is not so. As the 
Logos has not appeared in the form of glory ^ but in the form 
of a servant, joining Himself to the reality of our nature, as 
this had come to be through the results of sin, so also, for the 
revelation of His Logos, God the Lord accepts our conscious- 
ness, our human life a^ it is. The drama He enacts is a trag- 
edy, quickening a higher tendency in the midst of our human 
misery. The forms, or types, are marred by want and sin. 
The " shadows " remain humanly imperfect, far beneath their 
ideal content. The " spoken words," however much aglow 
with the Holy Ghost, remain bound to the limitation of our 
language, disturbed as it is by anomalies. As a product of 
writing, the Holy Scripture also bears on its forehead the 
mark of the form of a servant. This, then, deceives our 
vision. This produces a result like what occurs in the case 
of many paintings of the latest French school, in which, 
at first sight, one sees, indeed, bubbles and daubs of paint, 
and even tints and lines, but not the image ; and only after 
repeated attempts a view is finally obtained, so that those 
daubs and bubbles disappear, the tints and lines become 
active, and the image stands out before us. This was 
the case with Christ Himself. How many an intelligent 
Jew has seen the Christ, but has failed to discover in 
Him the Son of God. Somatically, by merely gazing upon 
the multiplicity of the features of the phenomenon, this 
was not possible. No chemical investigation, however ac- 



480 § 81. UNITY AND MULTIPLICITY [Div. Ill 

curate, could have discovered any difference between the 
flesh and blood of Christ and ours. He had a face like 
our face, an eye like our eye; and he only who took his 
stand at the proper distance, and who himself had received 
light in the eye of his soul, was able at length to see the 
shining out of the Divine nature in that Rabbi of Nazareth. 
Hence, from the attention bestowed upon the human phe- 
nomenal in the Holy Scripture, you must never promise 
yourself the impression of faith. This rather leads many 
away from the unity, and as such it stands in the way 
of faith. And however much it is your duty to study that 
multiplicity and particularity in the Scripture (both materi- 
ally and formally), yet from that multiplicity you must ever 
come back to the view of the unity of the conception^ if there 
is, indeed, to be such a thing for you as a Holy Scripture. 
The Scripture does not exist otherwise than after the "divers 
portions and divers manners " of Heb. i. 1, but in this diver- 
sity the principal thing is ever the word of Grod. 

So far, therefore, as the representation of the secondary 
authors (auctores secundarii) as amanuenses of the Holy 
Spirit, or also as an instrument played upon by the Holy 
Ghost, exclusively tended to point to that unity of concep- 
tion, there is nothing to be said against it. In that sense, 
one can even say that the Hol}^ Scripture has been given us 
from heaven. If, on the other hand, one goes farther, and 
for the sake of maintaining that unity of conception closes 
the eye to the many-sidedness and multiformity of the Script- 
ure, and the organic way in which it gradually came into ex- 
istence as a sum-total of many factors, then nothing remains 
but a mechanical lifelessness, which destroys the vital, or- 
ganic unity. This was certainly not intended by our older 
theologians. They, indeed, pointed, and sometimes even with 
much detail, to the differing origin of the books, to the dif- 
ference of style and content, to the difference of character of 
the authors and of the vicissitudes of their lives, and also to 
the different tendency of the parts of the Scripture. But 
yet it can scarcely be denied that they had established them- 
selves too firmly in the idea of a logical theory of inspira- 



Chap. II] § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 481 

tion, to allow the animated organism of the Scripture to fully 
assert itself. Tliis obliges us, just because we join ourselves 
as closely as possible to the historic Theology of the Reforma- 
tion, in order to prevent misunderstanding to explain in some 
detail this very different and multiform character of the mul- 
tiplicity in the Scripture, first, as it concerns the instruments 
of inspiration, and then as it concerns inspiration itself. 

§ 82. The Instruments of Inspiration 

Every revelation, which is not involuntary but voluntary 
and intended, assumes a consciousness in God from which it 
goes out, and a consciousness in man toward which it directs 
itself. It assumes, in the second place, a content which can 
take on the form of the conscious. And finally it assumes 
an instrument or vehicle by which it is brought from the 
consciousness of him who will reveal himself, into the con- 
sciousness of him for whom the revelation is intended. All 
revelation, therefore, falls away if the consciousness in God 
be not taken as its starting-point, and becomes weakened 
when, though not entirely pantheistically but in a panthe- 
istic manner, one grants that perceptions arise in us, but 
denies that the fruit of those revelations in our consciousness 
was beforehand known and intended by God. In the second 
place, the essential character of revelation is undermined 
when, in a mystical sense, it is left to be choked in the 
world of our emotions, rather than made to come to its sub- 
limate in our consciousness. And, thirdly, revelation be- 
comes darkened and clouded when one studies exclusively 
its point of departure in God and its point of arrival in man, 
without a due consideration also of the conducting wire or 
line along which it directed itself to us. By our crea- 
tion after God's image, we are authorized to take, with refer- 
ence to this matter, the transmission from the consciousness 
of one man to that of another as an analogy, and in that 
case it is certainly true that this transmission is accomplished 
most readily and most often by the vehicle of language ; but 
by no means by this alone. In all sorts of ways also are we 
able, without ever speaking a word, to convey something 



482 §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INS.PIRATION [Div. Ill 

from our consciousness to the consciousness of others. First, 
there is that entire series of communications which is calcu- 
lated upon the eye as the vehicle ; all object lessons, pictures, 
the look of the eye, the changes of the facial expression, the 
movements of the body, the pointing to something, the doing 
of a symbolical or illustrative act, etc. To this is added, in 
the second place, the strong impression of a deed, of a 
repeated action, of the example. And, finally, in the third 
place, there enters here for our consideration, that varied 
hypnotizing influence by which one is able to subject the 
psychic life of the other to his will. But however broad our 
repertory may be for this purpose, it nevertheless remains a 
limited one, because we have no power over the person him- 
self ; neither have we the disposition of his lot. With God, 
on the other hand, there is no such limitation. He can influ- 
ence man by all the means that are present in his human 
composition and in his surrounding world. Hence, for the 
communication of His revelation, first of all He has the dis- 
posal of all the means that are at our service ; but also, in 
the second place, the human body and mind, and all increated 
capacities and powers, and the conditions in which one may 
be placed. None of these means may be taken as standing 
dualistically outside of God and over against Him. God 
Himself formed our consciousness, and preserves it in exist- 
ence from moment to moment. All our nervous life is in 
His hand and is His creature. Our imagination is a 
capacity quickened in us by Him. Our language is lan- 
guage wrought in us by Him. He gave us the susceptibility 
for impressions by our sense of sight. The mystical influ- 
ence, which is shown by biology or hypnosis, of soul upon 
soul, has been thought out by Him and realized in us. To 
which is added, moreover, that as our Creator He formed 
our personality and our disposition, approaches us in the root 
and centrum of our inner being, and can involve our life in 
all those events and experiences whose impression in us He 
will use for His ends. Thus, in the fullest sense of the 
word. He has the whole of man at His disposal and the world 
in which He has placed man. This leads of itself to the di?- 



Chap. II] § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 483 

tinction between the subjective and objective instruments of 
inspiration, and to the distinction between those means which 
of themselves are present in man or in the world round about 
him, and those which He purposely causes to originate or 
institutes for this end. 

Among these subjective and present means of inspiration, 
we name internal address^ external address and the impulse. 

By internal address we understand that God speaks to 
man, without making use of his organ of hearing, in the 
same way in which, outside of our organs of speech and of 
hearing, we hold a dialogue with ourselves. This is an 
ivTo^ XaXelv (a speaking within), by which God the Lord 
inworks directly upon our psychic consciousness, and there 
causes such thoughts or perceptions to arise as He wills. 
As a rule we are not able to do this immediately from man 
to man. We generally employ in this an action which goes 
out from our own consciousness to our nerves, thence to our 
organs of speech, thence to the air, by the repercussion of the 
air upon the auditory nerves of the other, and only along 
this way enters into his consciousness. But already in 
magnetic sleep we have an example of a transmission from 
consciousness to consciousness, which does not stand in need 
of this middle-link of speech and hearing ; and in the dia- 
logue which we hold with ourselves from moment to mo- 
ment, we perceive again and again that our organs of speech 
do not operate, neither, indeed, our organs of hearing, and 
that nevertheless successive changes of thought take place 
in us. And since God has access to our consciousness, not 
simply from without, but also from within, He cannot be 
bound to organs of speech and hearing ; hence by this in- 
ternal address we must understand that He brings thoughts 
directly into our consciousness, as coming to us from Him, 
which we understand as a dialogue of God and our soul. 
In this sense Jesus constantly affirms, " As I hear, I judge " 
(John V. 30), which cannot be interpreted otherwise than 
as a constant internal address of God in His inner being. 
With Adam, also, such internal address must be assumed 
before the fall, so that only after the fall we read that he 



484 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

lieard God, as though His voice walked in the garden upon 
the wind of the day ; an entirely natural description of the 
perception of God's voice, noAV no longer within him, but 
outside of him; not as internal address^ but as external 
address. It is self-evident that by sin the susceptibility for 
this internal address was blunted, but this does not take it 
away, that also after sin, in still the same way, but now from 
the special principium, the Lord was able to reveal His 
thoughts and thus also His words in man, viz. in the 
prophets. This internal address takes account, of course, 
of the observation of conceptions that are present in our 
memory, and of the language in which we express these 
thoughts and conceptions. There is something in this that 
offends, if one takes it that the forming of our conceptions and 
of our words is arbitrary and the fruit of conclusions (dicn^^ ; 
but it has nothing strange in it, when one perceives that the 
forming of conceptions and of words is the fruit of our nat- 
ural disposition (<^ucrt9) and is thus necessary, and has been 
a23pointed, therefore, for us by God Himself. Moreover, we 
leave it entirely undecided whether, in this internal address, 
God forms these thoughts and words in our consciousness, or 
whether He merely occasions such an urgency in our con- 
sciousness as interprets itself to our conception in those given 
words and thoughts. We read, to be sure, in Deut. xviii. 18, 
" I will put my words in his mouth," an expression which, in 
comparison with Exod. iv. 15 (where it is said to Moses : 
" Thou shalt speak unto him and put the words in his mouth," 
i.e. of Aaron), makes one almost think of a whispering in the 
ear^ even as Christ promises His apostles that "it shall be 
given you in that hour what ye shall speak" (Matt. x. 
19) ; but by no means prevents our accepting with this figure 
of speech also that the inworking has taken place in the cen- 
trum itself of the human consciousness, and from thence ex- 
tended itself to the organs of speech. This, however, by no 
means excludes the speaking through the organ of speech of 
a human being without having the action go out to his organ 
of speech. It is well known how, in magnetic sleep, one 
person is able to accomplish this with the other. With 



Chap. II] § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSriRATION 485 

those who were possessed similar phenomena occur. In our 
dreams also our organs of speech sometimes utter words 
which at least do not rise from our normal consciousness. 
And the strongest proof for this lies in the speaking with 
the glossolaly, by which the mouth uttered words which 
were entirely foreign to the thought-sphere of the speaker. 
Analogous to this is the speaking that has sometimes been 
taught to birds, and which from the side of God occurs in 
the significant speaking of the ass of Balaam. All these 
analogies show that the organs of speech of one can enter 
the service of the consciousness of another ; as, for instance, 
when one who knows no Latin and has no understanding of 
medicine has been magnetized, and dictates a prescription 
which not he but his magnetizer has thought out. 



The external address bears another character, and is even 
said to be (Num. xii. 8) '' mouth to mouth," or also (Exod. 
xxxiii. 11) to take place "face to face." Here the emphasis 
falls not upon what man speaks after the suggestion of God, 
but upon what he hears, even in such a way that the by- 
standers also can hear it. This is most clearly seen in Exod. 
xix. 9, where the Lord says to Moses : " That the people 
may hear when I speak with thee." This direct address 
appears equally clearly in the speaking from Sinai to the 
people, of which we read in Deut. v. 26 : " For who is there 
of all flesh that hath heard the voice of the living God speak- 
ing out of the midst of the fire, as we have ? " An entirel}^ 
unique fact, spoken of with emphasis no less than four times. 
With the call of Samuel the selfsame phenomenon appears. 
Samuel heard the sound of a voice, which he first took to be 
Eli's voice, and which only afterwards by the direction of 
Eli was recognized by him as the voice of the Lord (1 Sam. 
iii. 8, 9). What we likewise read of the voice of the Lord 
at the baptism of Jesus, and from the cloud at His trans- 
figuration, falls under the same category even as the speak- 
ing of God to Adam after the fall, when he heard the voice 
of the Lord walking in the garden upon the wind of the 



486 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

day. With respect to this external address Num. vii. 89 
is especially noteworthy, where the very place is indicated 
from which the voice went forth. There we read: "Then 
he (Moses) heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the 
mercy-seat that was upon the ark of the testimony, /rom between 
the two cherubim; and he spake unto him." The distinc- 
tion between this external address and the internal address 
allied to it, exists principally in this, that with the internal 
address the voice of the Lord is observed as coming up from 
within, while with the external address a perception arises 
that the sounds come from without. At the foot of Sinai the 
people hear the voice coming down to them from above. 
Moses hears the voice come to him from between the 
cherubim. Samuel observes the voice from the side of 
Eli's chamber. At the baptism of Jesus the bystanders 
heard the voice from heaven. According to 2 Pet. i. 17, 
Peter heard the voice on Tabor " from the excellent glory," 
etc. Of course the addresses of Jesus on the way to Damascus 
and on the Island of Patmos do not lie in the same line. 
After His ascension, Jesus bears somatically, also, our human 
nature. The question with regard to His speaking from 
heaven, therefore, is simply whether Jesus descended in order 
to speak with Paul from the ordinary distance, or whether this 
speaking took place in a way similar to what is indicated to us 
by the telephone. With the speaking of God in the address, 
on the other hand, the somatic remains wanting ; hence, also, 
the organs of speech by which to form the words. The ques- 
tion, therefore, here remains whether indeed this sound of a 
voice was produced by the vibration of the air-waves, or 
whether in the tympanum of the hearer a sensation was 
occasioned similar to what we occasion by the inflection of 
our voice. " He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ? 
He that formed the eye, shall he not see? " (Ps. xciv. 9). In 
like manner, is not God, who has established for us so wondrous 
a relation of voice, organs of speech, waves of air, tympa- 
num, auditory nerve and consciousness, Himself able to use 
each of these, His creatures, and apply them in like manner 
as He appointed and maintains them for us from moment 



Chap. II] § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 487 

to moment by His omnipresent omnipotence ? There is no 
room here for choice, since the more subjective interpretation 
is equally intricate, or, if you please, equally divinely-natu- 
ral, as the more objective. Neither does the occurrence on 
the way to Damascus, when the bystanders about Paul did 
not hear what he heard, offer any explanation; simply be- 
cause the speaking of the glorified Christ rests upon the 
somatic basis, which is not present with God, and the tele- 
phone even now shows how one can hear what the other 
does not observe. Whether, therefore, the address was 
accomplished by God's working on the air-waves, or merely 
upon the tympanum, the same effect wrought by us when we 
use our organs of speech, cannot be decided ; if only we hold 
fast to the fact that the person addressed heard words in his 
own language, in the same way as though he were spoken to 
by his neighbor. 

Merely for the sake of completeness we add in the third 
place the impulse. By itself the impulse is nothing else than 
the " being moved " Q^epeaOai) of 2 Pet. i. 21, in entire agree- 
ment with the "moving" DI^S of Judg. xiii. 25. This " mov- 
ing " indicates merely that the one moved has received a push, 
a touch which has driven him out from his repose, in the full 
sense " an impulse urging the mind." "And the spirit of God 
came upon Saul " (Hpifril), in 1 Sam. xi. 6, has precisely the 
same meaning. The most forcible example of this impulse, 
however, occurs in Jer. vi. 11 and Jer. xx. 9, collato 7 ; in both 
of which Jeremiah testifies that he experienced in his heart 
an impulse so overpowering that, try as he might, he was not 
able to offer resistance to it until it became to him " as a 
burning fire shut up in his bones." This impulse we num- 
ber among the subjectively present means, for the reason that 
the poet and artist in general speak of similar experiences. 
In the " Deus est in nobis, agitante calescimus illo," an allied 
sensation announces itself, which is even experienced by the 
writer of prose, when, as the French call it, he moves en veine. 
Such an impulse also forms the background of heroism. 
The hero feels in himself an impulse to action which he 



488 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

cannot explain, either from the world about him or from his 
world within. To him as well as to the artist this impulse is 
a mystery. The question whether such an impulse from the 
world of mysteries is not connected with the basis of genius 
in such select spirits, need not detain us here. Nothing pre- 
vents us from allowing that such a basis was also present in 
the whole personality of Jeremiah. He even knew himself 
to be prepared for his calling from his mother's womb. But 
even if this impulse in connection with inspiration is noth- 
ing else than the use of what is present in the subject, and 
the application of that for which he had the susceptibility, this 
impulse here bears nevertheless a peculiar stamp, insomuch 
as it always occurs as an impulse of the Holy Ghost. This 
is a closer definition, which certainly concedes the fact 
that God the Lord can cause such an impulse to come to 
us in the centrum of our psychical life ; but now employs 
it for a definite purpose, limits it to the sphere of the holy, 
and places it in connection with the entire plan of Reve- 
lation, which He is in the act of giving. The " clothing " 
(tTD^), however closely allied to the " moving " (D3?S), may 
not be placed on a line with the impulse. The former indi- 
cates the sensation, by which he who was apprehended feels 
himself enveloped and overcome as by an unknown power. 
It refers to a sensation, which, far from being an incitement 
to action, rather impedes and paralyzes. The D^S makes 
active, the tTD^ passive. 



The second class of subjective means of inspiration in- 
cludes the tardemah, " sleep " (HDn^ri), the chalom, " dream " 
(DiSn), and the chazon, "vision" (ptH). 

The Tardemah^ which occurs with Adam in Gen. ii. 21, 
Abraham in Gen. xv. 12, and Saul in 1 Sam. xxvi. 12, is men- 
tioned as a deep sleep, which falls upon a person from with- 
out. "Fall" (7S3) is the constant word with which this 
" sleep " is construed, and while at one time it says that the 
Lord caused such a sleep to fall^ at another time it says 
(1 Sam. xxvi. 12) that this deep sleep from the Lord had 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 489 

fallen upon them. The same word occurs in Job iv. 13 and 
xxxiii. 15 to indicate a very deep sleep, which falleth upon 
men, in slumberings upon the hed^ but as shown by the connec- 
tion in both cases, as a prelude to a Divine revelation ; while 
in Isaiah xxix. 10 such sleep is mentioned in an unfavorable 
sense, by way of a figure, to express a spirit of entire dul- 
ness and insensibility which should be poured out upon the 
people. This last, therefore, is a sleep in a metaphorical 
sense, for which reason it reads " the spirit of deep sleep," 
and consequently "pour" C]D3), and not "fall" (^£2), 
is used as verb. In all other places, on the other hand, the 
Tardemah is taken in its real sense, and occurs again and 
again as an absolute ansesthesis, which is effected by God 
upon the person, in order in this entirely passive state to 
cause an entirely other world to reveal itself to his inner con- 
sciousness, or as was the case with Adam, to operate upon 
him in a violent way. The narcotic sleep offers itself as 
analogy to this, and especially in the case of the violent 
operation which Adam underwent, one thinks naturally of 
the condition produced by chloroform or of the first effects 
of strychnine. But though it appears from these analogies 
that human nature is susceptible to such a state of absolute 
insensibility, the action which took place remains never- 
theless an effect of what God directly wrought, and so 
far as the nature of the psychical life during this sleep 
is concerned, it is an action of a different sort. It makes 
the impression of an entire liberation of the psyche from the 
connection which through the body it has with its surrounding 
world : a leading back of the psychic life into its centrum, 
and in that centrum a disclosure to the psyche of a mys- 
terious world, in which God comes to it and speaks to it. 
A form of revelation particularly noteworthy, because evi- 
dently this Tardemah does not enter into this life, but iso- 
lates the person, to whom the revelation comes, from this 
life, and then deals with him according to the law which 
applies to another than this earthly existence. 



490 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIEATION [Div. Ill 

The " dream " bears a different stamp. In the first place, 
here sleep or slumber maintains its common character; 
and, secondly, revelation-dreams exhibit almost always the 
form of our common dreams, in so far as in these dreams 
also an isolated drama is seen by the ego of the dreamer. 
The world of dreams is still a mystery to us. No one 
can tell whether in sleep one dreams only when on awak- 
ening one remembers it, or whether one always dreams 
when asleep but that as a rule in awaking one has no 
remembrance of it. Our dreams bear very different char- 
acters. In the common dream all connection is wanting 
with the actual condition, consisting in the fact that we lie 
in bed ; but with the nightmare one dreams mostly of excit- 
ing experiences which overtake us while we lie there. In 
what is more slumber than sleep we dream that we lie awake 
and are not able to get asleep. He who saw us slumber 
knows that we slept, but to us no transition took place from 
our day into our night consciousness. The content of our 
dreams generally is made up from images and remembrances 
which lie in orderly arrangement in our mind, but now 
appear ofttimes before us in entirely different combinations. 
Generally the outlines of the images in our dreams are vague, 
but often they are so sharply drawn, especially in the night- 
mare, that what we see we could readily reproduce in a 
drawing. There are dreams which as mere play of the 
imagination pass away ; but there are also dreams which 
work lasting effects, which discover one to himself, and 
dreams which are not free from guilt. Holy and demo- 
niacal influences often work side by side in our dreams. 
Whether indeed this wondrous world of our dreams simply 
shows the aimless movement of the images in us, or whether 
these dreams are the result of the activity of our spirits in 
our sleep, and constitute a component part of the spirit's 
activity, remains an absolute secret to us. This, however, 
may be said, that our dreams cannot be verified by us, that 
they are not consciously produced by us, but that they leave 
the impression of a drama shown to us by some one outside 
of ourselves, in which we ourselves are concerned, without 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 491 

knowing how, and by which an outside power leads us invol- 
untarily into scenes which arise without our aid. 

It must not be said, however, that the dream in reve- 
lation is nothing else than a common dream, in Avhich, sim- 
ply, other images appear. Not in the ordinary sense, but 
undoubtedly in a pregnant sense (sensu praegnanti), it is 
said in 1 Sam. xxviii. 6 : " And when Saul inquired of the 
Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor 
by Urim, nor by prophets." Three distinct revelation-forms 
are here mentioned in which Saul might have received an 
answer, and of these three the dream is one. And it is note- 
worthy that next to false prophets the pseudo-dreamers also 
are separately mentioned as " the dreamers of dreams " in 
Deut. xiii. 1, 3. Hence he who dreamed such a dream did 
by no means at his awakening entertain the opinion that it 
had been a common dream, which he could safely pass by 
and forget ; but he lived under the impression that something 
had been shown or told him which was possessed of symbolic 
or actual reality. The difference, therefore, between these 
two kinds of dreams was clearly perceived. This much, 
indeed, may be said, that in the scale of the means of reve- 
lation '' the dream " does not stand high. The " dream " 
is, indeed, the common means of revelation for those who 
stand outside of the sacred precincts, such as Abimelech, Pha- 
raoh, Nebuchadnezzar. The false prophets imitated nothing 
so easily as the dream (see Jer. xxiii. 32) ; and according as 
the revelation becomes richer and clearer, the dream becomes 
rarer. Neither with Moses, nor with the Christ, nor with 
the apostles do we find the dream mentioned as a revelation- 
form. When this dream was real, it consisted in this, that 
in the dream God appeared and gave His charge. When it 
was half-symbolic, as at Bethel, then the appearance of God 
took place in a given surrounding. And if it was purely 
symbolical, as wdth Pharaoh, then it needed the interpreta- 
tion (piriS), and w^as in itself unintelligible and incomplete. 
Revelation, therefore, by the symbolical dream consists of 
two parts : the dream itself and its interpretation, hotli 
of which bear a supernatural character. Every effort to 



492 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

explain the interpretation as a simple application of the 
rules of symbolism is vain, from the fact that in the case 
of both Joseph and Daniel the interpretation of the dream is 
not given by those who were versed in symbolism, but they 
were unable to do this, and it is given only by men who stood 
outside of this peculiar science, and who frankly declared 
that this interpretation was no fruit of their ingenuity, but 
of Divine suggestion. The peculiar character of the revela- 
tion-dream, therefore, consisted in this, that the person to 
whom it came saw, indeed, the scene or drama in a similar 
way as with so-called common dreams, in his night-con- 
sciousness ; but what he saw and heard was no product of 
the hidden workings in his own psychical life, but of an act 
of God in him. That, nevertheless, the drama in these 
dreams was generally formed from remembrances and images 
that were present in the memory and in the imagination of 
the dreamer, does not conflict with this in the least. As 
with internal address and external address the conceptions 
and words maintain the connection with the subjective nature 
of the person addressed, it is self-evident that a similar con- 
nection existed in the dream between what was present in 
the subjective imagination as constitutive element, and what 
God showed him. Only thus was it rational. 



The vision bears almost the same character as the dream, 
with this difference, however, that the dream occurs when 
one sleeps^ while the vision appears on the horizon of our 
inner consciousness when one is awake. As little as the 
dream, however, is vision a phenomenon foreign to our nat- 
ure, which occurs exclusively in the economy of revelation. 
What is exceptional, therefore, by no means lies in the vision, 
but in this, that God the Lord makes use of the visionary capa- 
city of our psyche, by which to introduce something into our 
consciousness. It must be granted that the dream is more com- 
mon than the vision, but this is no proof that the visionary does 
not belong to our nature. No one, indeed, will exclude from 
our human nature a thirst and talent for art, even though this 



Chai-. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 493 

aesthetic power, with most people, never passes the poten- 
tial stage ; and such is the case with the visionary capacity. 
Whether or not it will discover its existence depends upon 
the inner and outward disposition of the person. In the East 
the chance for this is better than in the West. The Semitic 
race developed this capacity more strongly than the Indo- 
Germanic. By one temperament its development is favored ; 
by another weakened. In times of excitement and gen- 
eral commotion, it is more usual than in days of quiet and 
rest. He who is sesthetically disposed becomes more readily 
visionary than the intellectualist. Sensitive nerves court the 
vision more than what have been called nerves of iron. Psy- 
chically diseased conditions are more favorable to the vision- 
ary than the healthy and normal ; and often before dying a 
peculiar visionary condition appears to set in, which is ex- 
ceedingly worthy of note. Vivid imagination forms the 
transition between the common wakeful consciousness and 
real vision, which operates in a threefold form. It is strong- 
est when one becomes agitated by a phantom, especially 
when this is occasioned by an evil conscience. Macbeth 
sees everywhere the image of Duncan, the king he murdered, 
and in his inquiry whether that image is real, he is unable 
to distinguish appearance from reality. Of an entirely dif- 
ferent nature is what is called "absent-mindedness," i.e. a 
life in another world than the real, either as the result of 
much study and thought, or of the reading of history or 
novels. This is carried so far by some people, that the very 
members of their family affect them strangely at times, and 
they imagine themselves to be in the company of their novel he- 
roes. Finally the third form is the vision of the artist, in whose 
spirit looms the image, which from his spiritual view lije will 
paint on the canvas or chisel in marble. But these are not 
visions in the real sense, since the horizon of our inner view 
here still remains subject to the verification of our conscious- 
ness. And this is the very thing lost with vision. Images 
and forms then rise before us, which force themselves upon us 
as an outside power, repress the autonomous activity of our 
imagination, and bring us outside of ourselves. Then one 



49-1 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

is awake, and sits, stands, walks, or rides, and meanwhile 
loses himself, and sees sometimes close at hand sharply out- 
lined images in colors and in forms, which, even when the 
vision departs, leave him a sharp and clear impression, so 
startlingly vivid that he can scarcely make himself believe 
it was not reality. Hyperesthesis can introduce such illusory 
conditions, and can even assume the form of monomania 
and be a precursor of insanity. In the "Fixed Idea" 
(Zwangvorstellung), also, a visionary image may obtrude 
itself upon us against our will. And finally we observe, 
that vision occurs in rest, in action, in dialogue, and even 
with the adoption of the person in the drama of the vision. 
But in whatever form it occurs, it is always character- 
istic of the vision that the person who sees it ceases to be 
master in his own consciousness and in his own imagination, 
and is nothing but a spectator, while another power is active 
within him. 

With this general discrimination of that which is visual, it 
is not in the least surprising that in the Hol}^ Scripture the 
vision is also attributed to false prophets (Is. xxviii. 7, Jer. 
xiv. 14, Ezek. xii. 24, etc.), and that outside of Scripture 
even, in history, the visionary plays such an important 
role. When, therefore, in the Holy Scripture the vision 
(ptn and njn^, Gen. xv. 1) appears as a fixed form, espe- 
cially of prophetical revelation, it must not be taken as though 
there were anything uncommon in this vision ; but it should 
be understood in the sense that God the Lord made use of 
the capacity for visions in man in order to reveal to us His 
will and His counsel. At best it may still be remarked that 
the revelation vision often appears with a certain connexity 
and continuity. Not some strange vision now, and again 
one some years after, but the vision is constantly repeated in 
a definite series, even introduced by a vision of a call, by 
which all the visions become together the successive acts 
of one mighty drama. Thus construed, the visionary phe- 
nomena are certainly subjected to a governing power, while 
the visions themselves have nothing uncommon about them. 
That which is uncommon consists exclusively in this, that 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 495 

God the Lord announces Himself in the vision, that it is 
He that shows what is seen, and that the visionary person 
knows that he is dealing with God. 

Of the content of the vision, it may be said that the same 
remarks apply to it as apply to that of the " dream." The con- 
tent is generally composed from the data which were present 
in the imagination or in the memory of the visionary person ; 
but from these data a new drama is composed, and in this 
way all sorts of mysteries of the counsel of God are shown. 
The difference, however, between the prophetic and apoca- 
lyptic vision is apparent. In the first the vision joins itself 
to the historic reality, in the midst of which the prophet 
lives, while in the Apocalypse the drama arises from the 
hidden world and moves towards him. For which reason 
the forms and images in the prophetic vision are mostly 
known and common, while in the apocalyptic vision the 
images are monstrous, or appear in a wondrous manner, and 
sternly set themselves against every effort to reduce them to 
a figure intelligible to us. Recall, for instance, the cheru- 
bim in Ezekiel, or the appearance of Christ to John on 
Patmos, as sketched in Rev. i. 13-16. The content, however, 
of such a vision is not always dramatically realistic, so that 
it contains both speech and action. There are also visions 
that are purely symbolical (such as the well-known visions 
of the olive tree, the flying scroll, etc., of Zechariah), 
which, just like the symbolical dream, miss their aim unless 
an interpretation accompanies them. Wherefore, both in 
Zechariah and in the Apocalypse of John we find this sym- 
bolic vision constantly followed by its interpretation. 



The ecstasy needs no separate treatment here ; later, in con- 
nection with prophetical inspiration, it will come in its own 
order. Ecstasy is distinguished from vision in degree of 
intensity, but not in kind. As soon as the action of the 
visionary power communicates itself to the motory nerves, 
and consequently withdraws the muscular action from the 
will of the person, ecstatic conditions follow, which according 



496 §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

to the intensity of the action exerted, are weak in impulse or 
overwhelming in their pressure. A single word is needed 
here concerning n^Hto (Mar 'ah, vision), which does not stand 
on a line with HJTO (Mach'zeh, vision). The mar'ah is to be 
distinguished from the chazon, in so far that the mar'ah seldom 
plays any part in the sphere of psychic-visions, and rather 
indicates the seeing of a reality which reveals itself. Chazah 
is a gazing at something that requires effort, and in so far 
indicates the psychical weariness which the seeing of visions 
occasioned, while Ra'ah of itself indicates nothing more than 
the perception of what passes before us. When a Mar^eh 
appears, the seeing of this form or image is called the Mar'ah. 
Special mention of this Mar'ah occurs with Moses. After 
him no prophet arose (Deut. xxxiv. 10) " whom the Lord 
knew face to face " ; and since this "face to face" is chosen 
by the holy apostle, by which to express the immediate 
knowledge of the blessed, with Moses also it must be taken 
to mean a seeing of the reality of heavenly things. In Num- 
bers xii. 6-8 it is said in so many words, that the Lord 
reveals Himself to other prophets in a vision or in a dream, 
but "my servant Moses is not so." With him the Lord 
speaks "mouth to mouth,, even apparently (H^'H^I), and not 
in dark speeches ; and the similitude (njl^H) of the Lord 
shall he behold. " ^ We need not enter here upon a study of the 
character of this appearing of Jehovah, but we may say that 
this is no seeing in the visionary condition, but rather the 
falling away of the curtain behind which heavenly realities 
withdraw themselves from our gaze. This was a temporary 
return of the relation in which sinless man in paradise saw 
his God. Not continuously, but only in those moments 
in which it pleased the Lord to reveal Himself to Moses 
"with open face." A form of revelation which, of course, had 
nothing in common with the Christophany or Angelophany. 



1 It is noteworthy that hn-id is here used for common vision. A devia- 
tion, which comes under the general rule, that a sharply drawn distinction 
of conceptions and a consequent constant usage of words is foreign to the 
Scripture. 



Chaf. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 497 

In this pregnant sense the Vision forms of itself the tran- 
sition from the subjective to the objective means of revelation. 
Distinction can here again be made to a certain extent 
between such mediums of revelation (media revelationis) as 
were present in the ordinary course of life, and those others 
which in a supernatural way proceed from the special prin- 
cipium ; even though it is self-evident that it is by no means 
always possible for us to draw the boundary-line sharply 
between the two. In itself, the birth of a person is a 
common event; but when such a person is set apart and 
anointed from the womb to a holy calling, in this very 
birth already mingles the working of the special principium. 
These objective means of revelation must claim our attention 
here, because they also were made ancillary to inspiration. 
This appears most forcibly in the case of the Christophany 
and Angelophany, which is never silent, but always tends at 
the same time to reveal to man what was hidden in God. This 
applies also to the signs (rtri'l^) in the widest sense, because 
all these, the ordinary as well as the extraordinary, the per- 
manent as well as the transient, uttered audible speech^ or 
tended to support a given revelation, to explain or to confirm 
it. The field for this should therefore be taken as broadly as 
possible. The whole appearing of Israel and its historic 
experiences must here be brought to mind : all the difficul- 
ties between Israel and its neighbors ; the national conditions 
which the Lord called into life in and about Israel ; the 
covenant with His people ; the persons which the Lord 
raised up in Israel and put in the foreground; the natural 
phenomena which Israel observed ; the diseases that were 
plagues to the people ; the tabernacle and temple-service, 
— in short, everything comprised in the rich, full life that 
developed itself in Israel. To this is added as a second factor, 
but woven into the first, that series of extraordinary actions, 
appearances and events which we are mistakenly wont to 
view exclusively as miracles. It was under the broad and 
overwhelming impression of this past, of this nation as a 
whole, and of these events, that he grew up who was called 
to extend the revelation, and was trained for that revelation ; 



498 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

which education was still more definitely accentuated by 
personal surroundings and experiences. 

But besides this general service which the objective phe- 
nomena rendered, both the ordinary and the extraordinary, 
they tended at the same time, by inspiration, to reveal the 
thoughts of God to the agents of His revelation. This 
applies especially to the whole utterance of nature, in so far 
as the veil, which by sin was put upon nature and upon our 
eyes, was largely lifted in that higher life-circle of Israel, so 
that the language of nature concerning "the glory of the 
Lord, which filleth the whole earth," was again both seen and 
heard. It will not do to view the revelation of the power of 
God in nature as an outcome of mechanical inspiration. It was 
established organically, in connection with what the messengers 
of God both saw and observed in nature. This revelation 
assumes a different character, when the "rainbow," the 
" starry heavens," and the " sand of the seashore " are em- 
ployed, not as natural phenomena, but in their symbolical 
significance with respect to a definite thought of God. Only 
then does that which is common in itself become a sign; as, for 
instance, when Jesus points His disciples to the golden corn- 
fields, and speaks of " the fields, that are white for the har- 
vest." The speech, which in this sense goes forth from the 
common phenomena of nature, can thus be strengthened by 
the extraordinary intensity of their manifestations ; as, for 
instance, the thunder in Ps. xxix. has become the voice 
of the Lord — the lightning-bolt, more intensively violent in 
Ps. xviii., the mighty storm-wind of Habakkuk iii., or these 
three together upon Horeb. This significance can also be 
emphasized by their strikingly noticeable succession, as in 
1 Kings xix. 10-12. Striking events, like that meeting 
with Melchizedek upon Abraham's return from war with 
the mountainous tribes, may give, as here appears, an 
entire series of thoughts from the revelation of God. What 
is common in itself can become a sign, simply because 
prophesied beforehand (for instance, 1 Sam. x. 7). And, 
finally, all sorts of things that were common in themselves 
can obtain a significance by their combinations or positions, 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 499 

such as the tabernacle, together with all the things that 
belonged to the sacred cultus ; the memorial stones in Jordan ; 
the boards which Isaiah put up in the market-place ; the 
scrolls of the law and Tephilloth, and even the iron pan of 
Ezekiel. With all these things and phenomena, common in 
themselves, the " sign " originates ; either because God at- 
taches a definite significance to them, or because they derive 
that significance from history or from attending circumstances. 
And it is not so much these things themselves, but much 
more the significance, original or given to them, which, 
understood by faith or indicated by a special inworking of 
the Holy Spirit, rendered service as an instrument to reveal 
and to inspire the thought of God. 

This applied in still stronger measure to those extraordi- 
nary phenomena and events which are called " wonders " 
(nSID), or, in narrower sense, are spoken of as wonderful 
works (Niphleoth). The root from which these spring 
has been spoken of in connection with our study of the 
special principium, and the effort to explain them subjectively 
may be said to have been abandoned. If it is entirely true 
that they mostly fell to the share of believers, and that 
unbelievers sometimes did not see what believers saw very 
clearly, this affords not the least ground to subjectivize 
the miracles as such, after the intention of the Holy Script- 
ure. Together with those single wonders, which one ob- 
served and another not, there are a number of others, which 
revealed themselves with an overwhelming impression to all 
that were present. Just remember the exodus from Egypt 
and the miracles in the wilderness. Again, it may not be 
forgotten that the simple presence of a fact is not enough to 
cause it to be perceived. As often as our mind is abstracted, 
and our attention refuses its action, it occurs that something 
is said or done in our presence which escapes our notice. Of 
this, therefore, nothing more need be said. All these medi- 
tation-theories have had their day, and nothing remains 
except the absolute denial of the miracle on one hand, and 
on the other hand the frank confession of its reality. Mean- 
while, in the matter of inspiration, we are less concerned about 



50Q § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

the reality of the miracle, or the general revelation of God's 
power, which it reveals, than about the sense, thought, or 
significance which hides in these "wonderful works." In 
those miracles and signs there also lies a language^ and in the 
matter of inspiration that language claims our attention. 
This peculiar language lies in all the phenomena and events 
which are extraordinary ; and therefore no distinction need 
here be made between the Theophanies, the miracles in 
nature, the miracles of healing and of destruction, etc. In 
all these miracles a thought of God lies expressed, and in the 
matter of inspiration that thought of God is the principal 
interest. For this reason, however, the reality should not 
be looked upon for a moment as accidental or indifferent. 
Without that reality even thought misses its ground in God, 
and it is by this very union and combination of to ov with the 
mind that thought receives its ratification^ and comes to us, 
not as an idea suggested by ourselves, but as a communica- 
tion from God to us. The principal thought in all miracles 
now is the thought of redemption. When the existing order 
of things distresses us, and turns us pessimistic, and places 
nature with its curse over against us and above us, as a power 
against which all resistance is vain, the miracle proclaims 
that that power is not the highest, that the heavens of brass 
above us can be opened, and that there is still another reality, 
entirely different from this order of things, which does not 
clash with our moral aspirations, but is in harmony with 
them. The world, such as it became by the curse, and now 
is, under the tempering of that curse by common grace^ 
offends the only fixed point which the sinner retains in 
his moral consciousness, viz. his sense of right. Wrong tri- 
umphs again and again, while innocence suffers. Between 
the hidden life and outward conditions there is no harmony, 
such as our sense of right postulates. It is this problem 
which presented itself with great force in Israel, and for 
which no solution is given except in the miracles. The 
miracles voice a palingenesis which, first in the psychical 
and after that in the physical world, shall hereafter dis- 
solve all dissonance in entire harmony. Every miracle is a 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 501 

real prophecy of the parousia and of the restitution of all things 
which it introduces. The miracle is the basis of the hope^ in 
that entirely peculiar significance which in Scripture it has 
along with, faith and love. It shows that something different 
is possible, and prophesies that such it shall sometime he. 
It is an utterance of that free, divine art, by which the 
supreme artist, whose work of creation is broken, announces 
the entire restoration of his original work of art, even in its 
ideal completion. Hence there can be no question of a "vio- 
lation of the order of nature." This assumes that this order 
of nature has obtained an independent existence outside of 
God, and that at times God interferes with this independent 
order of things. Every such representation is deistic at 
heart, and in fact denies the immanent and omnipresent om- 
nipotence by which God supports the whole cosmos from 
moment to moment, and every order in that cosmos. The 
miracle, therefore, may not be interpreted as being anything 
else than an utterance of the special principium, taken as 
prineipium essendi. An utterance which, preformative and 
preparative, and thereby at the same time annunciatory, 
views and ends in the parousia. The Niphleoth, therefore, 
include the spiritual as well as the material miracles. They 
react savingly against sin as well as against the misery which 
flows from sin. 

Hence the miracles are no disconnected phenomena, but 
stand in connection with each other, and, as was shown above, 
they form one organic whole, the centre of which is Christ 
as the " Wonderful " and its circumference His people. The 
great central miracle, therefore, is the Incarnation, which in 
turn lies foreshadowed in the Christophanies. With those 
Christophanies the manifestation consisted in this, that, as in 
paradise God had created the body of Adam, He likewise here 
provided a human body, which presently returned to nothing, 
and merely served to render the appearance as of a man pos- 
sible. In the plains of Mamre Abraham does not perceive at 
first that he is dealing with anything else than a common 
human occurrence. Even where angel appearances are spoken 
of, we may not represent angels as winged beings. Angels 



502 § 82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

have no bodies; they are spirits; and they appear with wings 
only in the symbolic representation of the vision. In real 
appearances they always stand before us in the form of a man. 
All this, however, was altogether outside our nature. It gave 
us to see what was like unto our nature, not what was of our 
nature. Thus Christ is the "Wonderful" (Is. ix. 6), and in 
connection with this there arranges itself about His person 
the whole miracle-cyclus of His baptism, the temptation in the 
wilderness, the transfiguration upon Tabor, the voice in the 
temple, the angel in Gethsemane, the signs at the cross, 
the resurrection and the ascension, in order to be succeeded 
by the second miracle-cyclus of the parousia. In like manner 
we see that entire series of Niphleoth, or mighty works, 
going out from Christ and becoming established by Him in 
the sphere of the elements, in the vegetable kingdom, in the 
animal kingdom, and among men — a series of miracles, the 
afterglow of which still gleams in the miracles of the apostles. 
Peter, indeed, testifies (Acts iii. 16) that the authorship of 
the healing of the cripple lay in Christ. 

In this organic connection the one group of miracles ap- 
pears before us which is immediately connected with Christ. 
To this is joined a second group of miracles which does not 
point to the Christ, but to the appearance and the mainte- 
nance of His people. The fixed point in this group is the 
miraculous birth of Isaac, placed in the foreground as the 
great "wonder" by Paul in Rom. iv. 17 sq. What lies 
behind this merely serves to prepare the ground, and render 
the appearance of God's people possible. Only by the call- 
ing of Abraham and the birth of Isaac, when he and Sarah 
had become physically incapable of procreation, is this people 
born upon this prepared ground, and come to its incarna- 
tion. This was the great mystery. After this follows in the 
second place the miracle-cyclus of Egypt, of the wilderness, 
and of the taking of Canaan. Then the miracles which 
group themselves about Elijah and Elisha in conflict with 
the worship of Baal. And finally the group of miracles 
which, outside of Canaan, is seen in the midst of the 
heathen, when the great conflict between Israel and the 



Chap. II] §82. THE INSTRUMENTS OF INSPIRATION 503 

nations was temporarily ended with the apparent destruc- 
tion of Israel, as with its Golgotha. 

Of course it extends beyond the lines of our task to 
work out more fully this concentric exposition of miracles. 
We merely wanted to show that in this entire phenomenon 
of miracles there lies one continuous manifestation of the 
great predominant thought of Redemption. This manifesta- 
tion by itself was not enough to cause the thought that 
expressed itself in it to be understood and to be transmitted. 
To the " handling with hands " QyjrrjXaipdv') of 1 John i. 1 is 
added the " seeing " (dewpelv)^ and it is only by that seeing 
that insight is obtained into the meaning and significance of 
the miracle. So much, however, is evident that the sight of 
these several miracles, or the reading of the narrative, counts 
among the means used by God in the revelation of Himself 
to the holy men of old. This is true in a twofold way : 
First, in so far as the miracles occasioned a deep impression 
of God's presence and of His overwhelming omnipotence, by 
which the ban, put upon believers by the superior power of 
the cosmos, was broken, and they were set free and faith 
was wakened. And secondly, because in each miracle by 
itself and in the mutual connection of all these wonderful 
works one grand, ever- varied thought of God expressed itself, 
the language of which only needed to be understood in order 
to have one's spiritual consciousness enriched. It should 
be noted, however, that the holy men of God separated that 
God who manifests Himself in His miracles, so little from 
the God who created and maintains the cosmos, that in 
their perception the glory of the Lord in creation and in 
nature constantly identified itself with that other glory 
which He revealed to and in His people. The last four 
Psalms show this most plainly : First, in Ps. cxlvii. 1-11 
the glory of God in nature is sung, in verses 12-14 the 
glory of God's people appears, in verses 15-18 the power of 
God over nature is again exalted, and finally we read, " He 
sheweth his word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments 
unto Israel. He hatJi not dealt so with any nation,''^ Thus 
to the singer the Niphleoth of the natural and special prin- 



504 §83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

cipium form one grand whole, while the antithesis is not 
lost for a moment. In the same way, in Ps. cxlviii. all that 
lives not only, but every creature that exists, is poetically 
called upon to praise Jehovah, while the manifestation of 
the special principium asserts itself in the end, when it 
reads : " And he hath lifted up the horn of his people, the 
praise of all his saints ; even of the children of Israel, a peo- 
ple near unto him. Hallelujah." And comparing Ps. cxlix. 
with cl. it is seen that in Ps. cxlix. the glory of the Lord 
among His people is the theme of the Hallelujah, while 
in Ps. cl. it is His greatness as creator and preserver of 
everything. Doubtless the singers and prophets of Israel 
owed this majestic conception of nature, which is entirely 
peculiar to Israel, to the prayer (Ps. cxix. 18), Open thou 
mine eyes, that I may behold, etc. ; only by the working of 
the special principium were they enabled to see the great- 
ness of the Lord in the utterances of the natural princip- 
ium ; but with this result that they by no means viewed the 
miracles as standing isolated by themselves, but always with 
the Niphleoth in the realm of nature for their background. 

Thus we see that apart from real inspiration itself, all sorts 
of subjective as well as objective mediums of inspiration were 
employed by God, by which either to prepare His servants 
for inspiration, to impart it unto them, or to enrich, ratify, 
or explain its content. 

§ 83. The Factors of Inspiration 

In the study of the factors of inspiration proper we begin 
with a sharp distinction between inspiration as a means of 
revelation and inspiration of the Holy Scripture. If, for in- 
stance, I take the fiftieth Psalm, the questions may be asked 
how, in what way, and on what occasion the singer was in- 
spired with the content of this song, and what the relation is 
between what he himself sang and what God sang in and 
through him ; but these are entirely different from the ques- 
tion by what action of the Holy Spirit this ancient song, in 
just this form, was adopted into the holy codex, by which it 
became a word of God to His whole church. For the pres- 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTOKS OF INSPIRATION 505 

ent, however, this latter question as to the special inspiration 
of the Holy Scripture may be passed by. It can only be con- 
sidered when the inspiration of revelation has been explained 
more fully. The thought cannot be entertained that a 
prophet like Amos, as an inspired person, may never have 
spoken or written anything more than those nine chapters we 
now have as oracles of God in his name. In length these nine 
chapters are scarcely equal to one short sermon. The asser- 
tion, therefore, is none too strong, that he spoke under 
prophetic inspiration at least twenty times as much, while 
whatever has been lost has nothing to do with the inspiration 
of the Holy Scripture. With these nine short chapters only 
can there be a question of this. The two kinds of inspiration, 
therefore, must be kept apart, and we must consider first 
what came first, viz. inspiration as the means employed of 
God, by which to cause His revelation-organs to speak, sing, 
or write what He desired and purposed. It cannot be de- 
nied that in the Holy Scripture, even for the greater part, 
utterances occur from the revelation-organs which make 
the impression of being the utterance of their subjective 
consciousness, but back of which a higher motive appears to 
have been active, flowing from another consciousness stand- 
ing above them. In Psalm xxii., for instance, a speaker is 
evidently present who moans from the depths of his own 
sorrows, but before the song is ended the impression is 
received that an altogether different " man of sorrows " 
addresses you. Nothing derogatory is here implied to the 
more objective medium of inspiration treated in the former 
section, by which foreign words and scenes affected the ear 
and eye of the men of God. But in the Holy Scripture 
these objective means of revelation are not the rule, and the 
greater part of the content of the Scripture presents itself 
as having come forth subjectively from the human author, 
while nevertheless in his subjective utterance there worked 
a higher inspiring Trvevfia ; and it is properly this action of 
the Holy Spirit which here introduces inspiration as means 
of revelation in its narrowest sense. For this reason inspira- 
tion bears one character in lyric poetry, and another with 



506 § 83. THE EACTORS OE INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

the prophets, and still another with the Chokma, with Christ 
and with the apostles, so that each of these kinds of inspira- 
tion must separately be considered. But these lyrical, pro- 
phetical, chokmatic inspirations, etc., have something in 
common^ and this must first be explained. 

Inspiration rests upon the antithesis between the Spirit 
of God and the spirit of man, and indicates that the Spirit of 
God enlists into His service the spirit of man, disposes of it, 
and uses it as His conscious or unconscious organ. In this 
the human spirit is either more active or passive, in pro- 
portion as it has greater or lesser affinity to what God will 
reveal by it. If that affinity is entire, as is the case in 
some apostolic epistles, the action of the human spirit will 
seem to be the sole factor, and inspiration will scarcely be 
observed ; while, on the other hand, where this affinit}^ is 
very limited, as is the case with the most of Ezekiel's visions, 
the human spirit appears as little more than a phonograph, 
which serves to catch the action of the Spirit of God. 
This inspiration lies grounded in the nature of our human 
spirit. This is no isolated potency, but one that is pervasive. 
Our spirit can be affected by other spirits, and this can be 
done in two ways : either by entering in by the periphery, 
in order thence to approach the centrum of our spirit ; or by 
entering into that centrum, in order thence to extend itself 
to the periphery. A great orator approaches his hearers in 
the periphery of their consciousness, and thence penetrates 
to the roots of their sense of self ; while, on the other hand, 
the biologist or hypnotizer finds a means in the nervous 
system by which to penetrate at once to the centrum of the 
human spirit, and is able from thence to reach the periph- 
ery in such a way that the mesmerized subjects think and 
speak as he wills. Such a central inworking upon the 
human spirit goes out from the Spirit of God, and by in- 
version from Satan. Our spirit in our innermost being is 
not independent, but dependent, and, even without inspira- 
tion (taken in its narrower sense of means of revelation as 
Theopneustie)^ workings and inspirations from the spiritual 
world go out to the centrum of the life of our soul, which 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 50 T 

affect us for good or for evil. The poetical impulse, the 
inner promptings in every department of art, heroism, en- 
thusiasm, animation in speech and writing, the stimulus of 
genius, premonition, and in connection with this the entire 
chapter of divination and all that it entails, show incontest- 
ably that our consciousness is not a boat propelled solely by 
the oar-stroke of our own exertions, but that it may likewise 
carry a sail which may be filled by winds over which we 
have no control. 

Passing by Satanic inspiration, which will be discussed 
later in connection with the energumens, this general inspi- 
ration finds its ground first of all in the omnipresent imma- 
nence of G-od. (" In him we live and move and have our 
being.") There is not merely an " of him " and a " through 
him," but also an " in him." He is the fountain of all good, 
not in the sense that now and then we fill our life-jar with 
waters from that fountain, and afterward live of ourselves, 
but in the sense that, like plants, we flourish by the side 
of that fountain, because the root of our life is constantly 
refreshed b}^ waters from that fountain. This relation of 
God is defined, in the second place, more closely by our 
creation after the image of God. If one may say so, there 
is a general inspiration of God in all nature. It is lasting 
and limited in animal instinct, and in a measure even in 
wine and in the stimulating agents of several medicines. 
When a dog jumps in the water to save a child, there is an 
inspiration of God in that animal ; and when thunder dis- 
tresses us, and fresh mountain air makes breathing an ex- 
hilaration, there is inspiration of a higher power. But with 
man, this inspiration assumes a special form by virtue of the 
affinity between God's Spirit and ours. God is Spirit. This 
is, according to Christ, to ovtco^ 6v of His being, and conse- 
quently with us also the deepest point of our human life lies in 
our pneumatical existence. In so far as our nature is created 
after the image of God in original righteousness, this excel- 
lency could be lost and our nature become depraved; but not 
our creation after God's image so far as it pertains to its essence 
(quod ad substantiam) . Our human nature is unassailable. 



508 § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

The capability of having consciousness, which is the dis- 
tinguishing mark of the pneumatical, has not been lost, and 
in this lies man's openness to inspiration Qlnspirationsfdhig- 
keit). Hence, inspiration can work in the unconverted as 
well, as was the case with Balaam and Caiaphas, and though 
it generally occurs in connection with conversion, it is by no 
means dependent upon this. The creation of man as a pneu- 
matic being opens the possibility of communion betAveen his 
spirit and the Spirit of God, by which the thoughts of God 
can be carried into his thoughts. To which is to be added, in 
the third place, that man is created, not as one who is always 
the same, but as a self-developing being, and that it is his 
end (jiXo';') that God shall be in him and he in God, so that 
God shall be his temple (Rev. xxi. 22), and he a temple 
of God (Eph. ii. 21). This, likewise, offers the means by 
which the influence of the Spirit of God upon his spirit 
can be supremely dominant. 

Care, however, should be taken against a confusion of 
terms, lest by an exchange with its metonymy inspiration 
itself escape from our grasp. Inspiration is not the same 
as communion. This, indeed, places the ego of man over 
against the ego of God, and makes them wed or enter into 
covenant, but ever in such a way that the ego of man accepts 
the communion, enters upon it, and lives in accordance with 
it, — a unity, but one which rests upon a duality. Neither 
may we confuse the ideas of inspiration and mystical union. 
This, indeed, rests upon the necessary and natural union 
between the head and members of one organism and the 
body of Christ, and is not grounded in the consciousness, 
but in the essentia. The mystical union makes us one plant 
with Christ. Neither, again, may inspiration be confused 
with regeneration and with its consequent enlightening. To 
illustra^te : inspiration is the use of the telephone, in order to 
communicate a thought, while regeneration is the act which 
repairs the telephone when out of order. With such 
a man as Isaiah, regeneration was the means to save him 
unto life eternal, and inspiration to make him of service to 
the Church of God. Every effort, therefore, to interpret 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 509 

inspiration from an ethical basis, and to understand it as a 
natural fruit of sanctification, must be resisted. The possi- 
bility of inspiration does not depend upon the normal or 
abnormal condition of the nature of man, but lies in his 
nature as a pneumatic being, which as such is open to the 
central in working of the Spirit of God. 

Hence, with inspiration we deal with three factors : 
(1) with the spirit that inspires (spiritus inspirans), (2) with 
the spirit of man that is inspired (spiritus hominis cui inspi- 
ratur), and (3) with the content of what is inspired. 

In God who inspires, inspiration assumes thought and will. 
He who pantheistically denies consciousness in God or 
merely darkens it, abandons every idea of inspiration. For 
this very reason God is ever revealed unto us in the Holy 
Scripture as the lights and this light in God is pictured as 
the brightness from which the light of self-consciousness 
is ignited in our spirit. "In thy light shall we see light." 
Nothing, therefore, can be present in our consciousness but 
God knows it. " For there is not a word in my tongue, but, 
lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether." That this does not 
refer to our words merely, appears sufficiently clearly from 
the statement, that " the righteous God trieth the heart and 
reins " (Ps. vii. 9) ; for by that word " reins " the deepest root 
is indicated in the subsoil of our conscious soul-life. The most 
complete transparency of pure, clear consciousness is like- 
Avise a characteristic of the being of God, by which His the- 
istic existence stands or falls. The ethical representation 
must, therefore, be dismissed, that inspiration gives rise 
to certain perceptions in us, which only afterwards produce 
thoughts in our human consciousness. At heart, this is 
nothing but the pantheistic representation of a deep (/Su^o?) 
out of which the thought separates itself in us only. If 
it is asked whether consciousness in God is anthropomorphic, 
and whether our world of thought is not limited by and bound 
to the finite, we readily reply : that the question contains some 
truth. The apostle himself acknowledges that our knowledge 
is a knowledge "in part," and that all our gnosis will sometime 
pass away, in order to make room for a higher ''seeing." 



510 §83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

He, however, who infers from this, that for this reason there 
is no consciousness in God, contradicts the apostle's assertion 
that even to us a still higher form of consciousness is com- 
ing. If consciousness could assume one form only, even the 
finite form of our consciousness by day, the conclusion would 
certainly be correct. But this is not true, since conscious- 
ness has many forms, one by day and one by night, one 
without and one in ecstasy, one now and one in the realm 
of glory, which proves it to be entirely natural that con- 
sciousness in God has its own Divine form. Neither does 
this end the question. That Divine consciousness has affin- 
ity to our human consciousness. " We shall know, even as 
we are known.''^ If it is self-evident, that our future con- 
sciousness must stand in the genetic connection of identity 
with our present consciousness, this of itself provides the 
bridge which connects the divine consciousness with ours. 
Even among men, the consciousness of a child differs from 
the consciousness of a man, and yet the greater can enter 
the consciousness of the child. Consciousness differs with 
each and all, but true love is able to place itself in another's 
place ; yea, in another's consciousness. With reference to 
its formal side, susceptibility for learning foreign languages 
sufficiently shows that consciousness is possessed of very 
great pliability, and is by no means frozen solidly in its 
form. If these are features in us of the image of God, 
we may safely conclude, that in the consciousness of God 
(1) there is affinity to our consciousness ; and (2) the 
possibility is found of entering into the form of the con- 
sciousness of another. This becomes a certainty, when 
you remember, that God Himself has fixed the form of our 
consciousness, and has first thought it in this way before 
He created it. Our form of consciousness, therefore, is not 
a strange something to God, for He knew it before He 
enriched us with it. And though we grant unconditionally 
that the thoughts of God may not be assumed as clothed in 
our forms, we maintain that God is able to cast them into 
our consciousness-form, and hence is also able to think them 
in our form. 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 511 

Next to this clear consciousness of thought, inspiration 
assumes in God who inspires the will to inspire this or that 
thought. This element of the will was neglected in former 
times, but in the face of the pantheistic representation of in- 
voluntary communication it now deserves a special emphasis. 
A twofold inspiration goes out from us : one is voluntary, 
the other involuntary. Voluntary when purposely we try 
to exert a certain influence ; involuntary when our act or 
person exerts an influence independently of our will. This 
is so, because our self-consciousness is exceedingly limited, 
so that we observe a very small part only of the working 
that goes out from us. With God, however, this is not so. 
He is not like the star that sparkles without knowing it, but 
is transparent to Himself to the deepest depths of His Being 
and the utmost circumference of His action. Here, there- 
fore, is no door that stands open for every passer-by to look 
in at will, but a door which on each occasion is opened. 
Inspiration of itself, therefore, presupposes in God the will 
and the purpose, from His Divine consciousness, to intro- 
duce into the consciousness of man this or that thought, 
transposed and interpreted into our form of thought, and 
thus to reveal it among men. 



The second factor that claims our attention is the spirit 
that is inspired ; viz. the spirit of man. The nature of this 
human consciousness may differ materially, and this differ- 
ence may arise from its disposition as well as from its con- 
tent. With reference to the disposition there can be affinity, 
neutrality, or opposition. In the case of the venerable 
Simeon in the Temple, there was a strong affinity of mind 
and inclination to the inspiration that was given him. The 
disposition of Jeremiah in Chapter xx. of his oracles bears 
witness to a strong opposition against inspiration ; while 
in Chokmatic poetry the disposition of the singer does 
not appear, and thus remains neutral. Of course, with 
affinity and sympathy the subjective expression is far more 
strongly apparent; with an antipathetic disposition more 



512 § 83. THP: factors of inspiration [Div. Ill 

violence must be clone to the man of God ; and with a neu- 
tral disposition neither the subject nor the feelings of the sub- 
ject come to light. With a sympathetic disposition and a 
neutral mind both, it is possible that the revelation-organ 
itself should not observe that inspiration takes place, as is seen 
in many a Psalm and in the prophecy of Caiaphas, John xi. 
50 and 52. The strongest possible expression for inspiration 
is the "Now this he said not of himself." Connected with 
this appears also the difference between aphoristic, more con- 
tinuous, and altogether continuous inspiration. We catch 
inspired words from the lips of Zechariah and Simeon, with 
whom it is restricted to one single inspiration ; we read of 
prophets and apostles, with whom repeated inspiration fre- 
quently bore an official character ; and in Christ, of whom 
it is written that the Spirit not merely descended upon Him, 
but also remained upon Him, we see an inspiration in His 
human consciousness, which ever continues^ — " As I hear, I 
judge" (John V. 30). 

But the content at hand in their consciousness must like- 
wise be taken into account. By consciousness in this con- 
nection we do not merely understand the action of thinking^ 
but also, sensation, perception, and observation in the general 
sense. With a man of genius from the upper strata of society, 
like an Isaiah, the content of this consciousness was, of course, 
much richer than with Amos, who had lived in the country 
among herdsmen ; and, on the contrary, poorer with James, 
who originally was a fisherman, than with Paul, who had 
attended the schools of learning. If, in such a conscious- 
ness, the conceptions and representations are already present 
which are necessary for the oracle as its component elements, 
the oracle needs merely to effect the new combination. If, 
on the other hand, they are wanting, the material of imagery 
for the symbolical manifestation must be borrowed from the 
content of the imagination. Though, thus, the so-called crvv- 
rrjprjo-L^ (i.e. our memory, our store of things) is in the first 
place the all-important factor, the imagination is needful as 
well, and not merely for the images in its portfolio, if we may 
so express ourselves, as for what, perhaps, the imagination is 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 513 

capable of doing with those images. Even outside of inspira- 
tion, with writers of note, you will see that series of images in 
the foreground which are in harmony with their inner nature ; 
and in proportion as the writer lives either by apprehension 
or by conception, the images will lie loosely among his words 
or they will dominate his style. The many-sided content of 
the consciousness must not be estimated by what lies ready 
for use at a given moment, but also by its almost forgotten 
treasures. All that has ever gone through our memory has 
left its impression behind, and we often discover that there 
has been stored in our consciousness the memory of con- 
ditions, persons, names and conceptions, which, except 
for some impulse from without, would never have recurred 
again to our mind. And finally, to this content of our con- 
sciousness must be added all that which, outside of us, has 
been chronicled and committed to writing or image, and 
thus lies in reach to enrich our consciousness. The sig- 
nificance of this ready material in the consciousness, or of 
w^hatever else our consciousness has at its disposal, be- 
comes plain at once, if we but recognize the organ of reve- 
lation to be a messenger who has something to communi- 
cate, on the part of God and in His name, to His Church. 
If, for instance, a superior officer in the army has to employ 
a captured farm-hand to send tidings to an inferior officer who 
has command in some distant town, the entire communication 
must be committed to writing, or, if the man is clever, be ex- 
plained to him clearly and in detail. If, on the other hand, 
the officer sends an adjutant who saw the battle from begin- 
ning to end, and knows the position of the entire army, a hasty 
word in passing whispered in his ear is sufficient, and quick 
as lightning the adjutant rides to obey the given order. 

It must not be imagined, however, that in the case of inspi- 
ration God the Lord is limited by this affinity of disposition, or 
by this content of the consciousness. Most of the apocalyptical 
visions rather prove the contrary. We have simply intended 
to indicate that, as a rule, that affinity and that content of the 
consciousness are employed by God as elements in inspiration. 
This is true even theologically ; not as if God, for the sake of 



514 § 83. THE EACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

the success of Revelation, selected the most suitable persons 
from among those who were accessible, but rather that He 
Himself caused these men to be born for this purpose, predes- 
tined them for it, and caused them to spend their youth amid 
such circumstances and surroundings, that in His own time 
they stood in readiness as suitable instruments. As Jeremiah 
declares that to him it was said : " Before I formed thee in 
the belly I knew thee : and before thou earnest forth out of the 
womb I sanctified thee. I have appointed thee a prophet unto 
the nations" (Jer. i. 5). This constitutes the fundamental 
thought which dominates the appearance of the revelation- 
organs from first to last. The words, "I know thee by 
name," in Ex. xxxiii. 12, indicate the same thing. And 
what is said of the ideal prophet in Isa. xlix. 1, 2, 5, by 
virtue of the comprehensive character of predestination, applies 
to all. This predestination cannot be limited to these men 
personally, for it embraces the whole sphere of life from 
which they sprang and in which they appeared. Such in- 
spiration would simply have been inconceivable in England 
or among any of our Western nations. Our consciousness 
stands too greatly in need of sharp conceptions, visible out- 
lines and rigid analysis. Since the world of thought that 
discovers itself to us in inspiration lies at first concentrated 
in its centrum, from whence it only gradually proceeds, there 
could be no question here of sharply drawn lines as the result 
of rigid analysis. The lines of the acanthus leaf cannot be 
admired so long as this leaf still hides in the bud. Inspira- 
tion, therefore, demanded a human consciousness that was 
more concentrically constituted, and this you find in the 
East, where dialectic analysis is scarcely known, while intui- 
tion is so much more penetrative, for which reason it describes 
its content rather in images than in conceptions. Moreover, 
intuitive consciousness lends itself more easily to that pas- 
siveness which, in a measure, is needful with all inspiration. 
The Western mind reacts more strongly and quickly against 
impressions received; the Oriental has that passive recep- 
tivity by which he surrenders himself to perceptions and drifts 
along with their current. He is more deeply inspired by nat- 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 515 

ure, and therefore more susceptible to the Divine influence 
(jTda')(eiv vTTo tov deov') which is the characteristic of all 
inspiration. While we are more ready to speaJc, the Oriental 
is more inclined to listen; he does not know what conver- 
sation is, in our sense of the word, and that very inclina- 
tion to listen aids his predisposition to inspiration. To this 
Ave may add, that among the nations of the East, Israel 
possessed these peculiarities in that modified form which pre- 
vented one-sidedness. It was Eastern, but formed the fron- 
tier against the West. The intuitiveness of the Israelitish 
consciousness, therefore, did not easily turn into an extrava- 
gant fancifulness, neither was it lost in a deep revery. The 
Jew possesses all needful qualities to secure a position of in- 
fluence for himself in the Western world. Within himself he 
carried two worlds, and this rendered Israel more capable 
than any other people of receiving inspiration and of repro- 
ducing it intelligibly to the Western world. Paul, the dia- 
lectician, and Zachariah, the seer of visions, were both from 
Israel. In connection with this, the Jew in the East had 
that peculiarity, which still marks the French of to-day, of 
being inflamed by an idea, which is no result of logical 
thought, but springs from national life. The promise given 
to Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees becomes the pole-star to 
Israel's life as a nation. That one animating thought ele- 
vates Abraham above Lot, and presently Jacob above Esau, 
maintains Israel's independence in Egypt, appears again and 
again during the period of the Judges, finds at length its 
embodiment in the idea of the King, finds its acme in the 
expectation of the Messiah, and preserves Israel in Babylon 
under Antiochus Epiphanes, under Herod, and in its periods 
of deformation. From the nature of the case, such an idea 
animating an entire people is a valuable preparation for in- 
spiration. It accustoms the whole nation to live under a 
higher inspiration. It has its disadvantages; life in an imagi- 
nary world may tempt to sin, as it did Tamar, and feeds false- 
hood especially, which is one of Israel's characteristic sins, but 
this is the defect of its quality^ and does not affect its excel- 
lence in the least. 



516 § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

If such was the general soil prepared in Israel fur inspira- 
tion, there was added to this in the second place that particu- 
lar factor, which intensified and specialized this predisposition 
in individual persons. This took place m their creation^ this 
creation being taken in connection with their genealogical 
origin, and going back, therefore, into the generations. But 
with all the emphasis this genealogical connection deserves, 
there is, nevertheless, the individual creation of the person, 
the moulding of his disposition, the tuning of the harpstrings 
of his heart, the endowment of him with charismata and 
talents, and the quickening in him of what in lesser measure 
was common to all his people. An election, if you please, 
not to salvation, but to service, to the task of an holy voca- 
tion, together with the fitting out of the elect one with every 
requisite for that service. The bow is provided, and also the 
arrows in the quiver. What lies hidden in the natural dis- 
position is brought out by the leadings of Providence in 
education and surroundings, — Moses at Pharaoh's court, 
David as the shepherd lad, Peter and John the fishermen 
on the waters of Gennesareth. The casting of the net, the 
watching of the water's ripple, the quiet waiting of an almost 
inexhaustible patience for higher power to send, fish into the 
net, and the constant readiness with fresh courage and hope of 
blessing to begin anew, constitute a choice preparation of the 
spirit for that restful and soulful abiding for the w^ork of 
grace, in which it is known that God alone brings souls into 
His nets. To these leadings of Providence is added, as a 
rule, the leadings of grace ^ which God the Lord imparted to 
His chosen organs of revelation. By this grace most of them 
were personally regenerated, and thus themselves established 
in the salvation, the inspiration of which fell to their share. 
In an uncommon way this increased the affinity between 
their own spirit and the Spirit of God, as well as between the 
content of their consciousness and the content of their inspi- 
ration. Not in the sense, as stated above, that inspiration 
itself might be explained from this ethical affinity. He 
who affirms this virtually places the inspiration of prophets 
and apostles in line with the animation of poets and preachers. 



Chap. II] §83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 517 

A virtuoso on the organ will work charms, if need be, from 
a poor instrument ; but only when the organ is worthy of him 
will his talent be shown in all its power : but who will say 
that for this reason his playing proceeds from the excellence 
of the organ ? No, the excellence is his who plays, and the 
organ merely serves as instrument. In the same way, the 
ethical excellence of the organs of revelation must certainly 
be taken into account, but it may not be said that this ethical 
excellence gave birth to inspiration. God alone is He who 
inspires, and even Isaiah or John are never anything but 
choice instruments, animated and tuned by God, who plays 
on them His inspiration. The difference of disposition in 
these instruments, however, determines the difference of 
intensity of inspiration. As ' a virtuoso on the violin" can 
only exhibit a part of his art on a violin of two strings, and 
only on the full-stringed instrument can bring all his powers 
into play, so the holy playing of inspiration that sounds in our 
ears, is entirely different, far richer, and infinitely more inten- 
sive, when God makes use of a David or a Paul than when 
Nahum comes from the woods or James' epistle is unrolled 
before us. There are certainly degrees of inspiration. Hab- 
akkuk affects one more mightily than Haggai. And with 
the same organs of revelation inspiration is at one time much 
richer and fuller than at another time, which undoubtedly 
depends again upon the mood of the singer or writer. But 
however necessary the close study of these degrees may be, 
and however often we may be permitted to connect them 
with the subjective disposition of the instrument used, never- 
theless, to derive inspiration itself from this, can never be 
allowed. All these differences may modify, specialize, and 
graduate the effect of inspiration, but inspiration itself does 
not proceed from the consciousness of man, but always from 
the consciousness and the will of God. All efforts to ex- 
plain inspiration ethically is a passing into another genus, 
and is a leap from the ethical into the abstract life of our 
consciousness. 

Finally, there ma}^ be added the ready help which every 
later inspiration found in that which had gone before, as well 



518 § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION [Div. lU 

as in the progress of the revelation of salvation, to which it 
ran parallel. The content of inspiration is not aphoristic. 
The one rather bnilds upon the other. In its beginnings, 
therefore, inspiration is mostly concentric and deep, and only 
gradually passes over into detail and moves upon the surface. 
As a rule, at least, the person to be inspired knew what 
had formerly been inspired to others, and with these earlier 
inspirations his own inspiration formed a concatenation of 
ideas. It connected itself with these. It found in them a 
thread which it spun to greater length. It is no inspiration 
now in China, then again in Rome, presently in India or in 
Elam, but an inspiration which uses men from one and the 
same milieu of life, and which historically exhibits a certain con- 
tinuity. For which reason the very images perpetuate them- 
selves with a certain continuity, and certain forms and ways 
of speech pass on from one to the other. Just bring to mind 
the Root^ the Shepherd and the ''sheep of his pasture." If on 
account of this, numerous factors were present in the conscious- 
ness of the person about to be inspired for the use of Him 
who inspires, the same applies to the actual dispensation of 
grace in Israel. There is not merely a disclosing of the 
holy world above to the consciousness, but the creation as 
well of a reality in Israel, which bears a holy character. 
This has its beginning already in the wondrous birth of 
Isaac. This reality establishes itself in the people, accent- 
uates itself in the tribe of Judah and in the house of 
David; in its usages and institutions; in its holy ceremo- 
nials, and in the types which point to the full reality 
to be realized by the Incarnation. From the nature of the 
case, this reality also exerted an influence, moulded and fash- 
ioned the more finely disposed spirits in Israel, and enriched 
the consciousness of those who were to be inspired with 
those ideas and representations and images, which were fit 
in every way to do service in inspiration. It made the lan- 
guage, in which Jehovah was to interpret His Divine thoughts, 
altogether a richer vehicle for inspiration. 



Chap. II] § 83. THE FACTORS OF INSPIRATION 519 

The third factor which claims our attention in inspiration 
is that which is inspired : — Id quod inspiratur. This content 
of inspiration is not accidental. It does not consist of 
magic sentences, nor yet of enigmatical communications 
concerning secret powers or incidental events. The whole 
content of what is inspired is taken from the counsel of 
God, and is dominated by the supreme thought of how 
the profaned majesty of God, both in man and in the 
cosmos, may again come to its theodicy. We have pur- 
posely taken pains to state the case in these definite terms, 
because the limitation of that content to the salvation of 
man's psychical life both is irrational and is contradicted by 
the Holy Scripture. The latter needs no explanation, and 
so far as the first is concerned, it would be irrational to 
intend exclusively the salvation of our psychical life, since 
the conditions of our somatical life are equally disabled. 
Irrational, to fix the eye upon the salvation of man alone, 
since man is an organic part of the cosmos. And it would be 
equally irrational to find the end of inspiration in man, since 
either the confession of God must be abandoned, or all things 
must find their end in Him. At this very point the effort 
falls away to seek the content of what was inspired exclu- 
sively in what is ethical-religious. This ethical-religious 
does not exist in isolation. In the case of the individual 
person it touches his body and circumstances as well ; in the 
case of a people, its earthly existence, its history, and its 
future. Separation, therefore, is here impossible. Even as 
you cannot find a man except in his body, you cannot expect 
to find what is inspired except it is alike psychical, somatical 
and cosmical. However, it may and must be granted that 
the content of what is inspired does not lend itself to this 
cosmical, except in so far as it stands in central connec- 
tion with the work of the Holy Spirit. Not because the rest 
is indifferent, but because inspiration has a purpose of its 
own ; viz. to introduce into the consciousness of the Church 
of God that world of thought which belongs to palingenesis. 
What lies outside of this is not received by the Church as 
such, but by the members of the Church, as "men and citi- 



520 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

zens," in a natural way. And the question, whether the nat- 
ure of this content joins itself to what God who inspires 
finds on hand in the person whom He inspires is answered 
as follows : that the restoration of what was profaned of ne- 
cessity joins itself to the condition of the profaned, and that 
the organs of revelation, whose own condition was that of 
depravity, and who themselves lived in this desecrated cosmos, 
found, both in themselves and in that cosmos, the canvas 
stretched on which the floral designs of grace were to be em- 
broidered. 

§ 84. The Forms of Inspiration 

Man received in his creation more than one string to the 
harp of his soul, and according to the nature of the objects 
that hold his attention his mood changes, he strikes a different 
key, and his mental action assumes new phases. The lyrical 
world differs in principle from the epical; the dramatic im- 
pulse far exceeds both in creative power ; while, on the other 
hand, poetical inspiration accentuates itself least in didactic 
poetry. Thus the human mind is disposed by nature to a 
multiformity of expression, which sustains connection with the 
multiformity of material that engages our attention. And 
since there is a wide difference in the material that consti- 
tutes the content of Revelation, it is entirely natural that 
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit has made use of that 
multiformity of our spiritual expression, and thus assumes 
at one time a lyric character, at another time an epical, some- 
times even a dramatic, but especially also one that is didactic. 
To some extent one may even say that in these aesthetic 
variegations certain fundamental forms are given for inspi- 
ration, and if need be the entire content of the Scripture 
might be divided after these four fundamental types. Since, 
however, outside of the Scripture also these four fundamental 
types continually overlap each other and give rise to mixed 
forms, it is more advisable to borrow the division of these 
types from the content of the Scripture itself. This we do 
when we distinguish between lyric^ cliohmatic^ prophetic and 
apostolic inspiration, among which the inspiration of the 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 521 

Christ stands as univoeal, and to which is added the later 
graphic inspiration in the narrower sense. 

Let each of these types be separately considered. 

Lyric inspiration comes first, because lyric itself, to some 
extent, bears an inspired character, and so offers us the 
most beautiful analogy to holy inspiration, and really sup- 
plies the only trustworthy key for the correct interpretation 
of the lyrical parts of the Scripture. Real lyric, worthy of 
the name, is not the passionate cry which describes in song 
the concrete, personal experience of sorrow or of joy, but 
appears only when, in the recital of concrete and personal 
experience, the note is heard of that which stirs the deeper 
depths of the hidden life of the universal human emotions, 
and for this reason is able to evoke a response from other 
hearts. In his Aesthetik, ii., p. 568 (3d Ausg. Lpz. 1885), 
Carri^re states it thus : " That which is entirely individual 
in lyric poetry obtains the consecration of art only by being 
represented as it answers to the nature of man, and by strik- 
ing the chord of something universally human, whereby it is 
reechoed in the hearts of others." Even this statement is 
not sufficiently full ; for when, by his personal emotions, the 
lyric poet has descended to the depths where his own life 
mingles with the waters of human experience, he has not 
reached the deepest bottom of this ocean. That which is 
common in the emotional life of humanity is not grounded 
in itself, but derives its powers of life from the immanence 
of God, whose Divine heart is the source of the vital breath 
that stirs and beats this ocean. Von Hartmann (^PMlosophie 
des Schonen, ii., p. 736) very properly observes that there is 
"a mode of feeling which transcends the purely anthropologi- 
cal^''' which, from his Pantheistic point of view, he explains 
more closely as " an extension of self -feeling (Selbstgefiihl) 
unto a form of universal sympathy (Allgefiihl), the outreach 
of this sympathy (Weltschmerz) toward the world-ground, 
i.e. its expansion into the intuition of the Divine (Gottes- 
schmerz)." Reverse this, and say that his concrete feeling 
is governed by the universal human feeling, and that, so far 
as it affects him, this universal human feeling is governed 



622 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. lU 

by the vital emotions in God, and the pathway of lyric inspi- 
ration is cleared. In every lyric poet you find first a con- 
siderable commotion of feeling, occasioned by his own joy or 
sorrow, or by the weal or woe of that which he loves. Sec- 
ondly, that sense of solidarity, by which in his personal 
emotions he discerns the wave-beat of the human heart. 
And finally, there works in him a dominant power, which, 
in this universal human emotion-life, effects order, reconcilia- 
tion, or victory. However subjective the lyric may be, it 
always loses the personal subject in the general subject, and 
in this general subject the Divine subject appears dominant. 
Since we may speak to this extent of a certain Divine in- 
spiration in the case of all higher lyric, it is readily seen how 
naturally lyric lent itself as a vehicle for holy inspiration, and 
required but the employment in a special way of the Holy 
Spirit, to effect the lyric inspiration of the Psalmist. 

The lyric poet does not merely sing for the sake of sing- 
ing, but from the thirst for deliverance. Under the weight 
of unspeakable joy or of consuming sorrow he is near being 
overcome. And now the spirit arouses itself within him, 
not to shake himself free from this feeling of sorrow or joy, 
but, luctor et emergo^ to raise the head above those waves of 
the ocean of his feeling, and either pour oil upon the seeth- 
ing waters, that shall quiet their violence, or bring those 
waves into harmony with the wave-beat of his own life, and 
thus effect reconciliation, or, finally, with power from on high 
to break that wave-beat. This is always done in two stages. 
First, by his descent from the personal into the solidary- 
human. He aptly remarks : I am not alone in these sorrows ; 
there are " companions in misery " (consortes doloris) ; hence 
that sorrow must have deeper causes. And secondly, from 
this " companionship in misery " he reaches out after the liv- 
ing God, who does not stand as a personified Fate over against 
this necessity, but with Sovereign Authority bears rule over it. 
It is evident, that God the Lord has led His lyric singers per- 
sonally into bitter sorrows, and again has made them leap for 
joy with personal gladness. But it also appears, in the second 
place, that these experiences of deep sorrow and high-strung 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FOKMS OF INSPIRATION 623 

gladness almost never came to them in concrete-individual, 
and, therefore, to a certain extent, accidental circumstances, 
but that almost always their lot in life was interwoven with 
the lot of their people, and thus from the start bore a solidary 
character. David views even his sicknesses as standing in 
connection with the combat he wages for God and His people. 
However, you observe, in the third place, that in and through 
the utterance of personal feeling, once and again a higher and 
a more general subject, and, if you please, another ego^ sup- 
plants the ego of the singer, and often ends by God Himself 
in the Messiah testifying through the mouth of the singer. 
This makes a confusing impression on him who does not 
understand lyric, and is the cause of many an error in 
exegesis. But this phenomenon, which at first sight seems 
somewhat strange, becomes entirely clear when in this in- 
stance also you allow the antithesis to be duly emphasized 
between sinful and sanctified humanity, between humanity 
in its state of depravity and humanity in the palingenesis. 
The lyric poet who stands outside of the palingenesis can- 
not descend deeper than the emotional life of fallen human- 
ity, and if from thence he presses on to God, he can do 
nothing more than was done by Yon Hartmann, who, be- 
ing depressed by sorrow, through the world-sorrow (Welt- 
schmerz) reached the supposed God-sorrow (Gottesschmerz), 
and thus falsified the entire world of the emotions. Such, 
however, was not the case with the singers of Israel. From 
their personal joy and grief, they did not descend to the gen- 
eral human feeling, but to the emotion-life of humanity in the 
palingenesis, i.e. of God's people. And when in God they 
sought the reconciliation between this higher life of the palin- 
genesis and actual conditions, their God appeared to them in 
the form of the Messiah, that other subject, who sang and 
spake through them, and caused them simultaneously to expe- 
rience the reconciliation and the victory over sorrow and sin. 
In the imprecatory Psalms, especially, this is most strongly 
apparent. Applied to our human relations in general, the 
imprecatory Psalm is, of course, a most grievous offence to 
our feelings, and entirely beneath the nobility of lyric. If, 



524 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

on the other hand, you place the lyric singer of the impre- 
catory Psalms under the absolute antithesis between that 
which chooses for and against God ; if you separate him from 
his temporal-concrete surroundings, and transfer him to the 
absolute-eternal, in which everything that sides with God lives 
and has our love, and everything that chooses eternally against 
God bears the mark of death and rouses our hatred, then the 
rule, " Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee ? " becomes 
the only applicable standard, and whatever departs from this 
rule falls short of love for God. When Jesus speaks of the 
man who should have a millstone hanged about his neck, that 
he may be drowned in the depths of the sea, the same fun- 
damental tone which sounds in all the imprecatory Psalms is 
sounded also by Him. As unholy and repulsive as the im- 
precatory Psalms are in the lips of those who apply them to 
our relative universal human life, they are solemnly true and 
holy when you take your stand in the absolute palingenesis, 
where God's honor is the keynote of the harmony of the hu- 
man heart. This is naturally denied by all those who refuse 
to believe in an eternal condemnation of those who continue 
in their enmity against the Almighty ; but he who in unison 
with the Scripture speaks of " a going into everlasting pain," 
from this absolute point of view cannot resent the imprecatory 
Psalm, provided it is taken as a lyric. 



(2) Chohmatic inspiration certainly belongs to didactic 
poetry, but forms, nevertheless, a class by itself, which, out- 
side of the domain of poetry, can make its appearance in 
prose. Under Chokmatic inspiration, the parables, too, are 
classed, and other sayings of Christ which are not handed down 
to us at least in a fixed form. When the question is asked 
in what particular didactic poetry distinguishes itself from 
non-didactic, gesthetici say that the didacticus first thinks, 
and then looks for the image in which to clothe his thoughts, 
while the non-didactic lyricist, epicist, or dramatist feels the 
initiative arise from phantasy, and only derives the form from 
the ideal image. In itself, inspiration is much less strong 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 525 

with the didacticus, and there are didactic poets with whom 
poetical inspiration is altogether wanting. With this kind 
of poetry, inspiration is not in the feeling, neither in the 
imagination, or in the heroic impulse, but exclusively in the 
sway of the consciousness. Not as a result of his discursive 
thought, but by an impulse of his perception, the real didac- 
ticus is impelled to song. By his immediate perception he 
understands what he sees the other does not understand, 
and this he communicates to him in song. Subsidiarily to 
this, is added that the didacticus, since he does not speak 
as one who is learned, but sings as one who is wise, is, at the 
same time, in sympathy with symbolism which unites the spir- 
itual with the material world, and therefore expresses himself 
in the form of nature-illustrations and parables. In the Chok- 
mah, this universal human phenomenon obtained a character 
of its own. Even as the prophet, the "wise man" was an iso- 
lated phenomenon in Israel. Similarly to didactic poetry, this 
Chokmah confines itself mostly to the domain of the life of 
nature and to the natural relationships of life. That life of 
nature and of man, in its rich unfolding, is the realization 
of a thought of God. It is not accidental, but develops 
itself after the Divine ordinances, which, even as the exist- 
ence of life, are the outflow of a Chokmah in God. Nature 
does not observe this, but man perceives it because, created 
after God's image, he is himself an embodiment of that thought 
of God, and is therefore himself a microcosmos. In his per- 
ception lies a reflected image of this Chokmah, which by 
nature is Wisdom^ and not science^ but which only by analy- 
sis and synthesis can become science. The purer and clearer 
that glass of his perception is, the purer and clearer will 
the image of that Chokmah reflect itself in him. For this 
reason, Adam was created, not merely in justice and holiness, 
but also in original wisdom. By sin, however, this percep- 
tion became clouded. There was a twofold cause for this. 
First, it reacts no longer accurately, and again, because 
nature itself and man's life in nature have become entangled 
in much conflict and confusion. For this reason, this natural 
Chokmah does no longer give what it ought to give ; it w^orks 



526 §84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

most effectively with simple folk, to whom only separate 
problems present themselves, but it refuses its service to the 
more richly developed mind, which faces all problems at once, 
and thus necessitates it by way of analysis to seek refuge in 
close thought. Palingenesis meanwhile presents the possibil- 
ity of resuscitating again this original wisdom in fallen man, 
and, at the same time, of giving him an insight into the order 
and harmony which hide behind the conflicts of our sinful 
life, and are active to provide the cleansing of them. This 
does not happen to everybody, not even though the enlight- 
ening has entered in, but it takes place with those individuals 
whom God has chosen and inspired for this purpose, and 
these are the real, specific, wise men, and what they produce 
is called the Chokmah. In this, therefore, we deal with an 
activity of the Holy Spirit, which directs itself to this orig- 
inal sense-of-life, to this practical consciousness of nature 
and life, and clarifies this, so that the wise man discerns 
again the wisdom which is apparent in God's creation and in 
life, is affected by it, and proclaims it in parable or song. 
This Chokmah, however, does not appear to him as arising 
from his subjective consciousness, but as addressing him 
from another subject, such as Wisdom, which must not be 
taken as a personification, but as the pure word in God (see 
1 Cor. i. 30), that to him coincides with the image of the 
Messiah. This does not imply that for this reason the solu- 
tion of all problems, as for instance the problem of the incon- 
gruity in the suffering servant of God, stands clear and plain 
before his eyes. On the contrary, there are conflicts, which 
cannot be explained on chokmatic ground, but the impres- 
sion of the Chokmah is, nevertheless, so overwhelming that 
the interrogation mark after these problems bears in itself 
the prophecy that it shall sometime disappear. Hence the 
"wise man " stands over against the " scorner," the " fool," and 
the " ungodly," who think after their fashion to have found a 
solution in cynicism, but have abandoned God and faith in 
his wisdom. To the wise man, on the other hand, the fear 
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. God must not be 
wiped out for the reason that we are not able to indicate 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 527 

harmony between Him and the world ; but from Him every 
departure must be made, even though by doing this we 
should lose the world. This assertion may not methodisti- 
cally be applied to discursive thought. It only applies to 
that Wisdom of which it is asked in Job xxxviii. 36, " Who 
hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given 
understanding to the mind?" The entire action, by which 
this wisdom is quickened, follows along the inward way, and 
does not come from without. For which very reason it could 
become a vehicle of inspiration. This also applies to its form, 
which is almost always symbolical, entirely apart from the 
question whether it is more commonly lyrical, epic, or dra- 
matic. Its form is and remains that of the Proverb (7t^^), 
the utterance of a thought in its material analogy. In the 
" riddle " (HTH) and " enigma " (HiC'^T'D), which words indi- 
cate entwining and intertwisting, the symbolical character 
may be less clearly apparent ; in both forms, however, lies the 
same symbolical tendency. The phenomena are significant 
of something, they are reminders of a thought, which comes 
from God, and can be understood by us ; not by these phe- 
nomena themselves, but by the affinity of our spirit to Him 
who speaks in them. And since this Wisdom does not consist 
of thoughts loosely strung together, but forms one organic 
whole, and needs the light of grace, by which to solve the 
problems of sorrow and of sin, this Wisdom at length concen- 
trates itself in Christ Jesus, whom finally the apostle places 
over against the foolishness (^^Kopla) of the world as the in- 
carnated Wisdom (Chokmah or cro(f)La). 



(3) So far as its result is concerned, Prophetic inspiration 
is distinguished from the lyric and chokmatic chiefly by the 
fact that in general it exhibits a conscious dualism of subject, 
whereby the subject of the prophet has merely an instru- 
mental significance, while the higher subject speaks the 
word. That other higher subject appears sometimes in 
lyrics (Ps. ii. et al.) and in the Chokmah (Prov. viii. et al.^, 
but where it does this appearance bears no dualistic charac- 



528 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

ter, and at least never becomes antithetic as in prophecy 
(Jer. XX., Ezek. iii., et al.^. In the lyric and in the Chok- 
niah there is " Konsonanz " of subjects, never " Dissonanz." 
In prophecy, on the other hand, duality of subject is the 
starting-point for the understanding of its working, and is even 
present where it is not expressly announced. Nothing can 
be inferred concerning this from the word K^D3. The ety- 
mology of the word is too uncertain for this. Who indeed 
will prove whether we must go back to i<^D3, !?D3, i<D, which 
would be identical with (/>«-, in <j>r]/jLL, or to >^^D3? Or also 
whether the form i^)'2 is a passive or intransitive katil-form, 
and whether, if effundere, to pour out, is the primary mean- 
ing of this root, Ave must think of a poured-out person, or of 
a person who causes his words to flow out like water across 
the fields ? One can offer conjectures, but to infer anything 
from the etymology as to the meaning of the word is at 
present simply impossible. The synonyms also, n^l and nth, 
merely indicate that the prophet is some one who is given 
to seeing visions. From the description of some of these 
visions, as for instance the vision of the calls, from the phe- 
nomena that accompanied them, and from the form in which 
the prophet usually expressed himself, it can be very defi- 
nitely shown, on the other hand, that, as subject, he felt him- 
self taken hold of by a higher subject, and was compelled to 
speak not his own thoughts, but the thoughts of this higher 
subject. The frequent repetition of the "Thus saith" (.il 
'^^^jl) proves this. In Jeremiah's spiritual struggle (Jer. xx. 
7 sg.) this antithesis reaches its climax. In 2 Sam. vii. 3 
Nathan first declares as his own feeling that David will 
build the temple, while in verses 4, 5 he receives the pro- 
phetical charge to announce to David the very opposite. In 
Isa. xxxviii. 1-5 we read the twofold " Thus saith," first, that 
Hezekiah will succumb to his sickness, and then that he will 
again be restored. The fundamental type is given in Deut. 
xviii. 18 as follows : " I, Jehovah, will put my words in his 
mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall com- 
mand him." We find this all-prevailing fundamental thought 
still more sharply brought out by Ezekiel in Chap. ii. 8: "But 



Chap. II] §84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 529 

thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee ; open thy mouth, 
and eat that I give thee.'" And in Chap. iii. 1, 2 : " Son of 
man, eat that thou Jindest, eat this roll, and go and speak. 
So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.'''' 
To eat is to take up and assimilate in my blood a material or 
food which originated outside of me. This, therefore, is a 
most definite indication that the subject from whose con- 
sciousness the prophecy originated is not the subject of the 
prophet, but the subject Jehovah. Whichever way this is 
turned, the chief distinction in prophecy is always that the 
subject of the prophet merely serves as instrument. 

From this, however, it must not be inferred that the char- 
acter or disposition of this instrumental subject was a matter 
of indifference. The same musician who at one time plays 
the flute, the other time a cornet, and at still another time a 
trumpet, produces each time entirely different tones. This 
depends altogether upon the instrument he plays and the 
condition of the instrument. In the same way this per- 
sonal character and present disposition of the prophet will 
give tone to his prophecy to such an extent that with 
Isaiah the result is entirely different from what it is with 
Hosea, and with Jeremiah from what it is with Micah. Only 
do not lose from sight that this, noticeable difference in 
prophecy, which is the result of the great difference between 
prophet and prophet, was also determined by the higher 
subject. As the player chooses his instrument according to 
the composition he wants to be heard, Jehovah chose His 
prophetical instrument. God the Lord, moreover, did what 
the player cannot do : He prepared His instrument Himself, 
and tuned it to the prophecy which by this instrument He 
was to give to Israel, and by Israel to the Church of all ages. 
If thus without reservation we must recognize the personal 
stamp which a prophet puts upon his prophecy, it may never 
be inferred that the fons prophetiae is to be sought in him, 
and that the primoprimae issues of thought should not come 
from the consciousness of God. We may even enter more 
fully into this, and confess that it was the preparation, educa- 
tion, and further development of a prophet and his lot in life 



530 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

generally that brought it about that in his consciousness all 
those elements were available which God the Lord should need 
for His prophecy. It may indeed be assumed that the ethno- 
logical and political knowledge of the kingdoms with whom 
Israel came in contact, and from which so many judgments 
proceeded, was present in the synteresis of the prophets. The 
capacity to gather thoughts and unite them into an opinion 
may likewise have been active in the instrumental subject. 
This much, however, remains fact, that so far as the ego of 
the prophet was active in this, it did not go to work from its 
own spontaneity, but was passively directed by another sub- 
ject, in whose service it was employed. 

Even this does not end our study of the anthropological basis 
of prophecy. Ecstasy, which is so strongly apparent on the 
heights of prophecy, is no uncommon phenomenon. We 
know as yet so very little of the nature and working of 
psychical powers. Biology, magnetic sleep, clairvoyance, 
hypnotism, trance, insanity, telepathy, as Stead called his 
invention, are altogether phenomena which have appeared 
from of old in all sorts of forms, and which science has too 
grossly neglected. Evidently these workings are less com- 
mon in quiet, peaceful times, and show themselves with 
more intensity when public restlessness destroys the equi- 
librium. This accounts for the fact that at present they 
are prominently coming again to the front. This at least is 
evident, that our psyche, over against its consciousness, as 
well as with reference to its body, can become so strongly 
excited that common relations give place to those that are 
entirely uncommon. Whole series of stations lie between 
common enthusiasm and wild insanity, by which in its course 
this action assumes a more or less concrete, but ever modi- 
fied, form. And so far as insanity has no directly physical 
causes, it carries wholly the impression of being a tension 
between the psyche and its consciousness, which is not 
merely acute, but becomes chronic, or even permanent. Ec- 
stasy is commonly represented as being the outcome of the 
mastery of an idea, a thought, or a phantom over the psyche, 
and by means of the sensibilities over the body, to such an ex- 



Chap. IIJ § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 531 

tent that for the moment the common working of the senses 
and of the other spiritual powers is suspended, and psyche 
and soma are used entirely as instruments of this mania, 
idea, or visionary image. If we combine these ecstatic phe- 
nomena with the biological, i.e. with the power which the 
psyche of one can obtain over the psyche of another, and 
grant that the power which other men can exert upon us can 
be exerted upon us much more strongly by God, we must 
conclude that in prophecy also God the Lord made use of 
factors which He Himself had prepared in our human nature. 
With this difference, however, that in this instance He makes 
use Himself of what at other times He places at the disposal of 
biologians. A complete analogy to prophecy would be given 
in this, especially if Stead's ideas about his so-called thought^ 
which rests upon the system of telepathy, were found to be 
true. He asserts to have reached this result telepathically, 
— that at a distance of ten or twenty miles, without any 
means of communication whatsoever, one man wrote down 
literally what the other man thought. This may lack ex- 
citement and passion, but by no means excludes ecstasy; 
it is well known that besides a passionate, there is also an en- 
tirely restful, ecstasy, which, for the time being, petrifies a 
man, or causes him to lie motionless as in deep sleep. 

If we inquire what the prophets themselves relate concern- 
ing their experience in such prophetic periods, a real differ- 
ence may be observed. At one time the seizure is violent, at 
another time one scarcely receives the impression that a seiz- 
ure has taken place. When that seizure comes they receive 
the impression of a tl^^T", i.e. as though they are put into a 
strait-jacket by the Spirit. This admits of no other explanation, 
except that they lost the normal working of their senses and 
the common use of their limbs. There is an lad laKwah 
which takes hold of them ; which indicates that the pressure 
came not gradually, but suddenly, upon them. Sometimes a 
"fall" is the result of this ; they fell forward, not because they 
wanted to kneel down, but because their muscles were para- 
lyzed, and, filled with terror, they fell to the ground. Mean- 
while they perceived a glow from within which put them as 



532 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

on fire, as Jeremiah declares that it became a fire in his bones 
which he could not resist. Ezekiel testifies (iii. 14), "I went 
in bitterness, in the heat of my spirit, and the hand of the 
Lord was strong upon me." At the close of the ecstasy the 
prophet felt himself worn-out and faint, and pathologically 
affected to such a degree that he said he was ill. In that 
condition he saw visions, heard speaking and saw whole 
dramas played; and when presently he is again so far re- 
stored to himself that he can speak, the continuity of his 
consciousness is by no means broken. He knows what hap- 
pened with him, and tells what he saw and heard. By itself 
there is nothing strange in all this. That which is distinc- 
tively prophetic does not consist of these psychical phenomena. 
These were common with pseudo-prophets. But these phe- 
nomena, which were commonly produced by pathological 
psychical conditions, or by superior powers of other persons, 
by the influence of mighty events, or by demoniacal influ- 
ences, in prophecy tvere worked hy G-od that He might use 
them for His revelation. 

This dualistic character of prophecy, coupled with the 
repression of the human subject, prompts us to explain 
prophecy as being epical, even if at times this epical utterance 
receives a lyrical tint. In the epos the ego of the singer 
recedes to the background, and the powerful development of 
events, by which he is overwhelmed, is put wholly to the 
front. An epos teaches almost nothing about the poet him- 
self. To such an extent is his personality repressed in the 
epos. The second characteristic of the epos is, that the singer 
not merely communicates what he has seen and heard, but 
also pushes aside the veil, and makes you see what mysterious 
powers from the unseen world were active back of all this, 
and that the things seen are in reality but the effect worked 
by these mysterious factors. To this extent the epos corre- 
sponds entirely to the content of prophecy, and only in the 
third point does the epos differ from prophecy. In the epos 
the poet deals merely with tradition, subjects it to his own 
mind, lifts himself above it, and exhibits his sovereign power by 
pouring over into the word, i.e. in the epos, what has happened, 



Chap. II] §84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 583 

but at the same time, and this is the triumph of the epos, ex- 
plains it and makes it understood. And the epical poet differs 
from the prophet in this very thing; the epicus rules as artist, 
while passively the prophet undergoes inspiration from a 
higher subject. We may grant that the epical poet also in- 
vokes a higher inspiration, as is shown in the "Jerusalem De- 
livered ; " and the " breathe into my bosom " (tu spira al petto 
mio) is certainly a strong expression, but with Tasso it is fol- 
lowed immediately by the statement : " and forgive if I mingle 
fiction with truth — if I adorn my pages in part with other 
thoughts than your own," which were inconceivable with the 
passivity of the prophet. 

If it is asked, where lies the mighty fact, which appears 
epically in the epos or Word of prophecy, we answer, that 
prophecy takes this drama from the counsel of God. While 
Chokmatic inspiration discovers the ordinances of God that 
lie hidden in creation, and lyric interprets to us the world of 
our human heart, in prophecy there is epically proclaimed the 
ordinance of God with reference to history, the problem of the 
world's development. This history, this development, must 
follow the course marked out by God in His counsel, and 
to some extent it amounts to the same thing, whether this 
course is seen in the facts or is read from God's counsel. The 
program lies in the counsel of God, in history the perform- 
ance of the exalted drama. Meanwhile there is this note- 
worthy difference between the two, that in the days of the 
prophets especially, the drama had been worked out only 
in a very small part, while in God's counsel the complete 
program lay in readiness. And secondly, even so far as it 
realized God's counsel, history could never be understood in 
its mystical meaning without the knowledge of God's counsel. 
It is noteworthy that the compilers of the books of the Canon 
classed Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings with the prophets 
as the former prophets, and that the later prophets join them- 
selves to these, as the later. If dioramatically we transfer the 
Oracles of what we call the prophets to beyond the last judg- 
ment in the realm of glory, and add Joshua to Kings inclusive, 
these together give us both parts of the drama, viz. (1) what 



634 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Diy. Ill 

was already performed, and (2) what was to follow ; while 
the comparison, for instance, of Kings with Chronicles makes 
the epical excellence of the former to appear clearly above the 
latter. The drama then begins from the moment God's 
people are settled in the Holy Land. What lies behind this 
is not history, but preparation. The Thorah gives the 
Toledoth. With Israel in Canaan the starting-point is given 
for the all-governing drama. What lies back of that is a 
description of the situation by way of prologue. With Joshua 
the drama begins, and ends only when the new humanity 
shall enter upon the possession of the new earth, under the 
new heaven. In this drama the prophet stands midway. 
As a Semite he knew but two tenses, the factum and fiens^ a 
perfect and an imperfect. The prophetical narrative presents 
that part of the programme which is performed. It does 
this epically, i.e. with the disclosure of the Divine agencies 
employed; while that which is to come is not seen by the 
prophet in reality, but in vision. Always in such a way, 
however, that to him a review of the whole is possible. He 
therefore is not outside of it, but stands himself in its midst. 
In his own heart he has passed through the struggle between 
this Divine drama of redemption and the roar of the nations, 
whose history must end in self-dissolution. He is conscious 
of the fact that that spirit of the world combats the Spirit of 
God, not only outside of, but also within, the boundaries of 
Israel. Thus by virtue of his own impulse he pronounces 
the Holy Spirit's criticism upon the unholy spirit of the 
world, and is filled with holy enthusiasm in seeing in vision, 
that that Spirit of God and His counsel shall sometime 
gloriously triumph. Thus there is an organic connection be- 
tween what was, and is and is to come ; a connection between 
one prophet and another; a connection also with the same 
prophet between the series of visions that fall to his share ; 
and this states the need of the vision of the call, in which 
God revealed to him, that he himself was called to cooperate 
in the realizing of the Divine counsel and in the further un- 
veiling of the drama. It is as foolish therefore to deny the 
element of prediction in prophecy, as it is irrational to make 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 535 

real prophecy consist of single aplioristical predictions. Un- 
doubtedly in the main prophecy offers the unveiling of that 
tvhieh is to come provided it is viewed from the point where 
the prophet stood and lived, so that very often he himself is 
active in the process which reflects itself in his Oracle. 

The apocalyptic vision only forms an exception to this, 
which exception, however, accentuates the more sharply the 
indicated character of common prophecy. The Apocalypse 
does not move from the prophet to the horizon, but leaves 
between him and the horizon nothing but a vacuum, in order 
suddenly to cause a vision to appear on that horizon, which is 
to him surprising and strange. A veil is pushed aside, which 
mostly consists of this, that " the heavens were opened," and 
when the veil is lifted, a scene reveals itself to the eyes of 
the seer which moves from the heavens toward him. Hence, 
the Apocalypse unveils the end, and is by its very nature 
eschatological, even when its meaning is merely symbolic. It 
rests upon the assumption that the end is not born from the 
means, but that, on the contrary, the end is first determined, 
and that this end postulates the means by which to realize 
it. Hence, it is far more severely theological than common 
prophecy, since it takes no pains to join itself to human his- 
tory, but abruptly shows itself on the horizon. God's coun- 
sel is what is really essential. From that counsel God shows 
immediately this or the other part, and for this reason the 
forms and images of apocalyptic vision are described with so 
great difficulty. The purpose in hand is to show the seer a 
different reality from that in which he actually lives, a real- 
ity which surely is analogous to his own life, but as under 
the antithesis of the butterfly and the caterpillar. How could 
the form of the butterfly be made more or less clear in out- 
lines borrowed from the caterpillar, to one who knows a cater- 
pillar but not a butterfly ? This is the problem which every 
apocalyptical vision faces. The forms and images, therefore, 
are composed of what the prophet knows, but are arranged 
in such different combinations and connections as to produce 
a drama that is entirely abnormal. The appearance of Christ 
in His glory on Patmos is truly the brilliancy of the butter- 



536 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

fly, but sketched in forms borrowed from the caterpillar. 
From this, however, the apocalyptic vision derives its artistic 
composition. This does not imply that the aesthetic element 
is wanting in common prophecy ; but in this no tableaux 
are exhibited which, in order to be exhibited, must first be 
arranged. With the apocalyptic vision, however, this is 
indispensable. On the prophetic horizon, which at first is 
vacant, it must show its form or drama in such a way that, 
however strange it may be to him, the prophet, nevertheless, 
is able to receive and communicate it. It is Divine art, there- 
fore, which makes the composition correspond to its purpose, 
and this accounts for the fact that the artistic Unity, in the 
symmetry and proportion of parts, in symbolism, and in num- 
bers, is seen so vividly in the Apocalypse. This is not arti- 
ficial, but spontaneous art. By counting it over, the fact has 
been revealed that the allegro in Mozart's Jupiter Symphony is 
divided into two parts of 120 and 193 bars ; that the adagio of 
Beethoven's B-major symphony separates itself into two parts 
of 40 and 64 bars. Naumann has found similar results in the 
master-productions by Bach. The proportion of the golden 
division always prevails in highest productions of art. No 
one, however, will assert that Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven 
computed this division of bars. This artistic proportion 
sprang spontaneously from their artistic genius. In the 
same way the unity of plan (Gliederung) in the Apocalypse 
must be understood, just because in vision the action of the 
seer is least and the action on the part of God is greatest. 

The exhibition and announcement of things to come, i.e. 
the predictive character, belongs not merely to the Apoca- 
lypse, but to common prophecy as well. " Before it came to 
pass I shewed it thee : lest thou shouldest say. Mine idol 
hath done them." " I have declared the former things from 
of old ; yea, they went forth out of my mouth, and I 
shewed them ; suddenly I did them, and they came to pass " 
(Isa. xlviii. 3-5, passim). Entirely in the same sense in 
which Jesus said to His disciples, " And now I have told you 
before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may 
believe " (John xiv. 29; comp. xiii. 19 and xvi. 4). However 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 537 

strongly it must be emphasized, therefore, that in the person 
of the prophet, in his disposition, education, surroundings, 
position in life, and in his preparation in the school of the 
prophets, a number of data are present which claim our 
notice in connection with his prophecies, all this, however, is 
no more than the preparation of the soil, and the seed from 
which presently the fruit ripens comes always from above. 
Even when seemingly he merely exhorts or reproves, this 
preaching of repentance or reproof is always the coming into 
our reality of what is ideal and higher, as the root from which 
a holier future is to bloom. 



(4) The Inspiration of Christ. — Since inspiration has been 
interpreted too exclusively as Scripture-inspiration, too little 
attention has ever been paid to the inspiration of the Christ. 
The representation, however, that the Christ knew all things 
without inspiration spontaneously (sponte sua), is virtu- 
ally the denial of the incarnation of the Word. The con- 
sciousness of God and the Mediatorial consciousness of the 
Christ are not one, but two, and the transfer of Divine 
thoughts from the consciousness of God into the conscious- 
ness of the Christ is not merely inspiration, but inspiration 
in its highest form. The old theologians indicated this by 
saying, that even the Christ possessed no archetypal, but 
ectypal theology, and he obtained this via unionis^ i.e. in 
virtue of the union of the Divine and human nature. In 
this there is merely systematized what Christ Himself said : 
(John xiv. 10) " The words that I say unto you, I speak 
not of myself " ; (John vii. 16) " My teaching is not mine, 
but his that sent me " ; (John xiv. 24) " The word which 
ye hear is liot mine, but the Father's who sent me " ; (John 
V. 30) " As I hear, I judge " ; (John viii. 26) " The things 
which I have heard from him these speak I unto the world " ; 
and (John xii. 49) " The Father which sent me, he hath given 
me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should 
speak." This in itself is the natural outcome of His real 
adoption of human nature ; but the necessity for this, more- 



538 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

over, was the greater, on account of His assuming that nature 
in all its weakness, with the single exception of sin (Heb. iv. 
15), which at this stage indicates that in Jesus no falsehood 
was arrayed against the truth, which, as with the common 
prophets, had first to be repressed. But in Christ there 
was an increase in tvisdom, a gradual becoming enriched 
more and more with the world that lived in the conscious- 
ness of God. This was effected by the reading of the Script- 
ures, by the seeing of things visible in creation, by His life 
in Israel, as well as by prophetical inspiration. In that sense, 
the Holy Spirit to Him also was given. In connection with 
His preaching we are told, " For he whom God hath sent 
speaketh the words of God: for he giveth not the Spirit by 
measure " (John iii. 34), an utterance which, as seen from 
the connection, may not be interpreted ethically, which would 
have no sense, but refers to inspiration. This " not by meas- 
ure " is also evident in this, that all kinds of inspiration, the 
lyric, chokmatic and epical-prophetical, unite themselves in 
Jesus, while everything that is connected with the suppres- 
sion of vital energy, the will, or mistaken thoughts in the 
case of the prophets, in the case of Jesus falls away. Even in 
inspiration. He could never be passive without becoming active 
at the same time. That the form of vision never takes place 
with Jesus, but all inspiration in Him comes in clear concept 
(notione clara), has a different cause. Before His incarna- 
tion, the Christ has seen the heavenly reality which to 
prophecy had to be shown in visions : " I speak the things 
which I have seen with my Father " (John viii. 38) ; " and 
bear witness of that we have seen " (John iii. 11). One may 
even say that the sight of this heavenly reality was also 
granted Him after His incarnation : " And no man hath as- 
cended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, 
even the Son of Man, which is in heaven''' (John iii. 13). 
This very absence, in the case of the Christ, of all instru- 
mental means, which were indispensable with the prophets 
because of sin, together with the absence of all individual 
limitation ('' for he had not taken on man, but man's 
nature," non hominem sed naturam humanam assumpserat), 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 639 

gives that absolute character of the teaching " as one having 
authority " to what He spake as the fruit of the inspiration, 
in virtue of the Divine union, the impression of which to this 
day, in the reading of His Word, takes hold of one so over- 
whelmingly. Entirely in harmony with this, the Scripture 
indicates that inspiration had in Him its centrum. He 
is the prophet; who spake in the Old Covenant by the 
prophets ; after His ascension bears witness by His apostles ; 
and who is still our prophet through the Word. (See Deut. 
xviii. 18 ; 1 Pet. i. 11, " The spirit of Christ which was in 
them testified beforehand" ; John xvi. 13). 



(5) The Inspiration of the Apostles, — He who derives his 
conception of inspiration exclusively from the inspiration of 
the prophets, is bound to conclude that there is no question 
of inspiration in the case of the apostles. In the case of the 
apostles, indeed, inspiration bears an entirely different charac- 
ter from that of the lyric, chokmatic, or prophetical organs of 
the Old Covenant. This difference sprang from a threefold 
cause. First from the fact that the Holy Spirit had now been 
poured out and had taken up His abode in the Church of God. 
This difference is most succinctly stated by the antithesis of 
inshining (irradiatio) and indwelling (inhabitatio). Secondly, 
from the fact that with the apostles inspiration adapted itself 
to their official function. And thirdly, from the fact that 
they came after the Incarnation, which the seers of the Old 
Covenant anticipated. As soon therefore as, on Patmos, 
inspiration deals no longer with the reality which appeared 
in the Christ, but refers to things to come, inspiration resumes 
with them its prophetical character, viz. in its apocalyptical 
form. The revelation that came to Peter was equally vision- 
like. And so far as Paul had not belonged to the circle of 
Jesus' disciples, an entirely separate calling, tradition and 
ecstasy were given him, which were needful to him and. 
adapted to his isolated position. With these exceptions,, 
there is nothing that suggests inspiration in the oral and: 
written preaching of the apostles, as given in the Acts and 



540 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

ill their Epistles. They speak as though they speak of 
themselves, they write as though they write of themselves. 
In all probability the same phenomenon showed itself in 
the hundred or more of their addresses and epistles, of 
which no reports have come to us. The "cloke and the 
parchments left at Troas," as an incident, stands by no 
means by itself. Almost the entire contents of apostolic 
literature bears the same ordinary character. If from out- 
side sources nothing were known of the inspiration of the 
prophets, the simple phrase " Thus saith the Lord " already 
shows that there is at least the pretence of inspiration. 
With apostolic literature, on the other hand, the sugges- 
tion of inspiration scarcely presents itself. In 1 Cor. vii. 
10, coll. 12, we even read of an antithesis between " I 
give charge," and " Yea, not I, but the Lord," but this 
refers to the difference between what Paul knew from the 
special revelation given to himself (1 Cor. xi. 23, "For I 
received of the Lord"), and by apostolic inspiration, as he 
expressly adds at the close of this same chapter : " And I 
think that I also have the Spirit of God" (1 Cor. vii. 
40). That inspiration, however, took place with the apos- 
tles, appears meanwhile from Matt. x. 19, 20 ; John xvi. 
12-14, 14-26, etc.; from Acts xv. 28, "For it seemed good 
to the Holy Ghost, and to us " ; from 1 Cor. ii. 10-12, 
"But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit," and 
this Holy Spirit alone could reveal to them the deep things of 
God. Paul, as well as the other apostles, had not received 
the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, and 
the effect of this is that he knew the things that were freely 
given by God. The same appears from 2 Cor. iii. 3, where 
on the tables of the heart an epistle of Christ is said to be 
wiitten, not with ink, but " with the spirit of the living God," 
and instrumentally this was effected by the apostles: "min- 
istered by us." In Eph. iii. 5 it is stated that the mystery, 
wliich had been hidden from former generations, " hath now 
been revealed unto his holy apostles in the Spirit." In Rev. i. 
10 John declares even, " I was in the Spirit." Paul does not 
hesitate to say that what they had heard of him is not a 



OiiAP. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 541 

*' word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God " 
(1 Thess. ii. 13). 

Evidently with them this inspiration was the working of 
the Holy Spirit dwelling in them, and this indwelling de- 
mands full emphasis. In the first place they had received 
inworkings of the Holy Spirit before the Day of Pentecost, 
and, in breathing on them, Jesus had officially communicated 
to them the gift of the Holy Ghost. Before Pentecost more- 
over they had been regenerated, for Jesus had prayed, not 
that Peter might have faith, but that the faith which he had 
might not fail. Nevertheless Jesus repeatedly declares that 
only when the Holy Spirit shall have been sent them from 
the Father, shall real apostolical inspiration begin, as it did 
on Pentecost in the sermon of Peter. In the Old Covenant 
the Holy Spirit stands truly "in the midst of them" (Isa. 
Ixiii. 2) ; but He is not yet the formative principle (princi- 
pium formans) for the circle. That circle was still national, 
and not yet oecumenical. It only became such on the Pente- 
costal Day, when the Church appeared, liberated from the 
wrappings of Israel's national life, as an independent organ- 
ism, having the Holy Spirit as its irvev^ia. Neither this 
mystery nor this difference can be more fully explained 
here. For our purpose it is enough, if the difference is 
made clear, that after Pentecost there was the indwelling 
of the Holy Spirit, while before that day there were merely 
radiations and inworkings as from without. From the nature 
of the case this was bound to give to inspiration an entirely 
modified form. Now it came no more as from without, but 
from within, and that same Holy Spirit, who, in us, prays 
for us with unutterable groanings, was able in like man- 
ner to use, guide, and enlighten the consciousness of the 
apostles, without any break taking place in them as of a 
duality ; yea, without their own perception of it. To this is 
added, as we observed, in the second place, that the impulse 
for the working of this inspiration lay in their official func- 
tion itself. Dualistic action of the Holy Spirit is thereby 
not excluded with them, as when, for instance, the Spirit says 
to Peter : " Behold, three men seek thee " (Acts x. 19), or 



542 § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

when the Holy Spirit did not suffer Paul to go into Bithynia 
(Acts xvi. 7), etc. As a rule, however, such a break did not 
occur, and their official calling itself formed the basis on 
which inspiration took place. The prophets' appearance was 
also official, but in a different sense. Their prophecy itself 
was their office, hence this office was very aphoristic and 
without a cosmical basis. But the apostles had to discharge 
the regular duties of a fixed office, which found its bed in life 
itself. This office was continued until death, and inspiration 
was merely given them, to direct their service in this office. 
They do not speak or write because the Spirit stimulates 
them to speak, or impels them irresistibly to write, but be- 
cause this was demanded of them by their office. Thus 
inspiration flowed into their everyday activity. This in- 
volves in the third place the different point of view, occupied 
by prophets and apostles, with reference to the centrum 
of all revelation ; viz. the Christ and His truth. It is the 
antithesis of imagination and memory^ poetry and remem- 
brance. With the prophets, who came before the incar- 
nation, the centrum of revelation could assume no other 
form than the dioramatic figures of their representation, 
while the apostles, who came after the Christ, testified of 
what they had heard and seen and handled of the Word of 
life. What was vague with the prophets, with them was 
concrete. Not the poetical^ but the remembering spirit strikes 
with them the keynote. Since the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit ever joins itself to what is present in its organ 
and adapts itself to this, it is evident that the inspiration, 
which with the prophet worked upon the poetical side of his 
consciousness, was with the apostle first of all a "remem- 
brance" (John xiv. 26). Their spiritual activity, however, 
did not limit itself to this. They had to proclaim the mes- 
sage, and for this they were endowed with the remembrance. 
In the second place they were to announce things to come, 
and for this they were given the apocalyptic vision. But in 
the third place they had to give the apostolic reflection con- 
cerning the " word of life " ; and for this the Holy Spirit led 
them into the deep things of God (1 Cor. ii. 10-12). And 



Chap. II] § 84. THE FORMS OF INSPIRATION 543 

here we do not speak of any apostolic dogmatics, or of a 
Pauline Theology. He who does this destroys the essential 
difference between the apostle as " the first teacher of the 
whole Church" and the common ministers of the Word. 
The apostolate may not be thought to be continued either in 
the papistical or Irvingite sense, nor can it be made common 
in an ethical way with the ministry of the Word. According 
to John xvii. 20, 1 John i. 3, etc., the apostolate is univoca. 
Only by their preaching does the Christ appear to the 
consciousness of humanity, in order successively to be 
assimilated and reproduced by this human consciousness in 
dogma and theology. The apostles have dug the gold from 
the mine, and from this gold the Church has forged the 
artistic ornaments. 

Every effort, therefore, to make the inspiration of the 
apostles identical with their enlightening must be resisted. 
For this places them virtually on a plane with every regener- 
ated child of God, that shares the enlightening with them. 
This would be proper, if the enlightening were already abso- 
lute in the earth. This, however, it is not. No less than sanc- 
tification enlightenment remains in fact most imperfect till 
our death, however potentially it may be complete. The 
apostles never claimed that they had outgrown sin. Romans 
vii., which describes Paul's spiritual state as an apostle, 
sufficiently proves the contrary. Galatians ii. also shows an 
entirely different state of things. With so much of un- 
holiness still present in them, how could their enlightening 
have been complete ? Their partial enlightening would never 
have been a sufficient cause for the absolute authority of 
their claims. This is only covered by the inspiration, which 
ever accompanied them, both in the remembrance and in the 
revelation of the mystery. 

A single remark should be added concerning the char- 
ismata, and more particularly about the "speaking with 
tongues," since the apostles themselves thus spoke. It is 
evident at once that this speaking of tongues was essentially 
different from the apostolic inspiration, in so far as it made 
a break in the consciousness, and repressed the activity of 



544 § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION [Dit. Ill 

the consciousness of the apostles, and caused a mightier 
spirit to control their spirit and organ of speech. This 
speaking in tongues falls under the category of inspiration 
only in so far as it establishes the fact, that an inspiring 
mind (auctor mentalis) outside of them gave direction to 
what was heard from them. Our space does not allow a 
closer study of this speaking with tongues, neither does it 
lie in our way to consider here the charismata in general. Be 
it simply stated, however, that they belong to the ecstatic 
phenomena. According to 1 Cor. xiv., the content of the 
glossolaly could be interpreted, but he who spake did not 
understand it himself. In so far, therefore, it must be judged 
by the analogy of the mesmerizer who causes his medium, 
who knows no Latin, to write Latin words, provided, how- 
ever, this phenomenon be not taken as being brought about by 
causing the spirit to sleep, but, on the contrary, as wrought 
by high exaltation. 

§ 85. Graphical Inspiration 

All that has thus far been said of inspiration does not refer 
at all to the Holy Scriptures as canonical writings. Suppose, 
indeed, that you knew that from the consciousness of God, 
by the Holy Spirit, inspiration had taken place in the con- 
sciousness of psalmists, teachers of wisdom, prophets and 
apostles, what warrant would this be, that what the Holy 
Scripture offers you, was really taken from the sphere of 
this inspiration, and had come to you in a sufficiently trust- 
worthy form ? What has been said thus far of the means and 
forms of inspiration refers to the prophetic, psalmodic, chok- 
matic and apostolic appearance among the people, in the gate, 
at the temple and in the first Christian circles. The field 
which this inspiration covered was incomparably larger than 
that which bounds the domain of the Scripture. Think how 
much must have been spoken by a man like Isaiah during 
all the years of his prophetic ministry. Compare with this 
his small book in our Hebrew Bible, of a little more than 
four quires, and you will be readily convinced that Isaiah 
spoke at least ten or twenty times as much again. How 



Chap. II] § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION 545 

little is known to us of the preaching of most of the apostles, 
even of Peter and Paul, who for many years discharged their 
apostolic mission. What are thirteen epistles for a man like 
Paul, whose' life was so active, and whose connections were 
so widely ramified? How much of controversy has been 
raised about his epistle to the Laodiceans, as though, indeed, 
that were the only one that was not included in the Script- 
ure ? On the other hand, what a large part of Scripture is 
left uncovered by inspiration, as thus far viewed. Even 
though 3^ou count Samuel and Kings among the prophets, 
the books of Chronicles, Ezra, Esther and Nehemiah, etc., 
are still left over. And, in the third place, even if there 
were not this difference of compass, still what has been thus 
far treated of could never result in anything more than that 
such an inspiration had taken place in a whole series of am- 
bassadors of God, while the compilation of what they sang or 
spake under this inspiration had received no supervision. 

With this in mind, we purposely distinguish graphic in- 
spiration from the other forms of inspiration; so that by 
graphic inspiration we understand that guidance given by 
the Spirit of God to the minds of the writers, compilers 
and editors of the Holy Scriptures, by which these sacred 
writings have assumed such a form as was, in the coun- 
sel of salvation, predestined by God among the means of 
grace for His Church. To prevent any misunderstanding, 
we observe at once that in an epistle like that to the Gala- 
tians, this graphical inspiration coincides almost entirely with 
the apostolic inspiration, for in an epistle that was sent, the 
apostolic inspiration itself bore a graphic character. Never- 
theless, the one conception is here not entirely covered by 
the other ; so far, indeed, as there was a choice between several 
epistles, or between several copies of the same epistle, another 
factor came into play. Moreover, we grant that it would be 
more logical, to class that which is not indicated as graphic 
inspiration as a subdivision under the activity of God with 
respect to the canon (actio Dei circa Canonem), which in 
turn belongs under the works of God pertaining to provi- 
dence (opera Dei, quoad providentiam), and more particu- 



546 §85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

larly to special providence (quoad providentiam specialem). 
For instance, the fact that the Epistle to the Colossians is, 
and the epistle to the Laodiceans is not, included, may have 
been caused by the preservation of the one and the loss of 
the other. There is, then, no question of a choice by men, 
nor of any inspiration to guide that human choice. It was 
simply the providence of God which allowed one to be lost 
and the other to be kept. To us it would be even preferable 
to treat this whole matter under the science of canonics, disci- 
plina canonica (which follows later), and much confusion 
would have been prevented, if this Divine activity in behalf 
of the Canon had always been distinguished in principle from 
the real inspiration. Now, indeed, there is a confusion of 
ideas, which to many renders a clear insight almost impossi- 
ble. A content like that of the second Psalm was certainly 
inspired to David, when this song loomed before his spirit and 
shaped itself in a poetical form. This, however, did not assign 
it a place in the Scripture, neither did this sanction it as an 
inspired part of the Holy Scripture. Since we have been 
accustomed to pay almost no attention to the original in- 
spiration, and for centuries have applied inspiration indis- 
criminately to all parts of Scripture, according to their 
content and form, ecclesiastical parlance does not permit the 
conception of inspiration to be entirely ignored in the com- 
piling and editing of the books of the Holy Scripture. This 
is the less necessary, since in this compiling and editing an 
activity from the side of God was exerted upon the spirit of 
man, which, to some extent, is of one kind with real inspira- 
tion. Let it never be lost from sight, however, that this 
graphic inspiration was merely one of several factors used 
by God in the " divine activity in behalf of the Canon." 

This graphic inspiration is least of all of a uniform charac- 
ter, but it differs according to the nature of the several parts 
of the Holy Scripture. It is least evident, as observed before, 
in the apostolic epistles, since these were prepared in writing. 
Neither can graphic inspiration have been greatly significant 
in purely lyrical poetic-productions, which were bound to their 
poetic form, and committed to waiting by the poet himself. 



Chap. II] § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION 547 

This simply required such a formulation of the content of his 
memory, that nothing was changed in it, or, if anything Avas 
changed, that this change also took place under the leading 
of God's Spirit. Then follow those productions of chokma- 
tic, prophetic, or lyric-didactic content, which were digests of 
longer recitations. As in the case of more than one prophet, 
the oral author superintended this digest himself, or some 
other person compiled the content of their Divine charge or 
teaching and committed it to book-form. With the latter 
especially graphic inspiration must have been more active, to 
direct the spirit of the writer or compiler. The working of 
graphic inspiration must have been still more effective in the 
description of the apocalyptic vision, especially when this 
assumed such proportions as the vision of John on Patmos. 
To obey the order of the " write these things " and in calmer 
moments to commit to writing what had been seen in ecstasy 
on the broad expanse of the visionary horizon, required a 
special sharpening of the memory. And at the same time 
it was necessary that in the choice of language and expres- 
sion the writer should be elevated to the heights of his sub- 
ject. But even this was not the department in which the 
activity of this graphic inspiration reached its highest point. 
This took place only in the writing of those books, for which 
no inspired content presented itself, but which the writer 
had to compose himself; that is, the historical hooks. With 
these writings also, as shown by their contents, there was no 
elimination of those natural data implanted in man for this 
kind of authorship, and made permanent by common grace; 
on the contrary, graphic inspiration adapts itself wholly 
to these natural data. The same methods pursued in our 
times, for the writing of any part of history, were pursued 
by the historiographers of the Old as well as of the New Tes- 
tament. Oral traditions are consulted, old chronicles and 
documents are collected, inquiry is made of those who may 
have knowledge of the particulars involved, and in this way 
a representation is formed of what actually took place. Thus 
Luke (i. 1) himself tells us, (1) that " many have taken in 
hand to draw up a narrative," (2) that he makes distinction 



548 § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

between the things of which he had entire and partial cer- 
tainty, (3) that he has carefully investigated once more all 
things from the beginning, (4) that he is particularly guided 
by the tradition of ear- and eye-witnesses, and (5) that then 
only he deemed himself competent to write a narrative of these 
things in good order (/ca^e^T)?). This excludes every idea 
of a mechanical instillation of the contents of his gospel, and 
may be accepted as the rule followed by each of the histori- 
ographers. Of course the question of the origin of the narra- 
tive of the creation cannot be included or classed under this 
rule. No man was present at the creation. Hence no one 
but God Himself, who has been present ever since He brought 
it to pass, can be the author of what we know concerning it. 
And this is taken entirely apart from the closer distinction, 
whether the first man had received that insight into the origin 
of the paradise, of sun, moon and stars, or whether this was 
granted to the Church at a later period, after the separa- 
tion from the Heathen. For all those things, on the other hand, 
which happened to or by man, which were matters of human 
experience, seen and heard, transmitted by oral tradition, and 
committed to writing in whatever way, the sacred historiog- 
rapher followed the ordinary method, and discovered at every 
turn the still imperfect standpoint at which the historiogra- 
phy of the times stood. In their writings it is seen that they 
consulted tradition, inserted sections from existing works, 
examined genealogies and other documents, and collected 
their material in this entirely natural way. This was the 
first task of their mind. Then came the second task, of 
making choice between different traditions and diverging 
documents. In the third place was added the more impor- 
tant task of understanding the invisible motive of this his- 
tory, and of observing in it the doings of God. And finally 
their latest task consisted in committing to writing the 
representation of the past which in this way had formed 
itself in their minds. And this brings to light what we mean 
by graphic inspiration. Even where providentially good tra- 
dition and trustworthy documents were within reach, their 
attention had to be directed to them. They needed guidance 



Chap. II] § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION 549 

in their choice between several, ofttimes contradictory, repre- 
sentations. In the study of the mystical background of this 
history their mind had to be enabled to perceive the Divine 
motives. And finally in the writing of what had matured in 
their mind, their mind and their mind's utterance had to be 
shaped after the mould of the Divine purpose that was to be 
realized by the Scripture in His Church. To some extent 
it can be said that none but natural factors were here at work. 
It often happens in our times that an author gets hold of a 
correct tradition, consults trustworthy documents, writes as he 
ought to write, obtains a just insight into the mysticism that 
hides in history, thus forms for himself a true representation, 
and commits this faithfully to writing. But in this case 
these factors were subject to higher leadings, and upon choice, 
inventiveness, study of conditions, forming of representations, 
insight into the mysticism of history, and upon- the final 
writing, the Holy Spirit worked effectively as a leading, 
directing and determining power; but the subjectivity was 
not lost. No one single subject could receive* in himself the 
full impression of a mighty event. To see an image from all 
sides, one must place himself at several points and distances. 
Hence we find in the Holy Scripture not infrequently more 
than one narrative of the same group of events, as for instance 
in the four Gospels ; these are no repetitions, but rise from 
the fact that in the consciousness of one subject the interpre- 
tation, and hence also the reproduction, of the incident was 
necessarily different from those of his fellow-laborer. This 
is the life of history. It gives no notarial acts, but reproduces 
what has been received in the consciousness, and does this 
not with that precision of outline which belongs to archi- 
tecture, but with the impressionistic certainty of life. This 
excludes by no means the possibility that the writings thus 
prepared were afterward reviewed by second or third editors ; 
and here and there enriched by insertions and additions. 
From their content this very fact is evident. Graphic inspira- 
tion must then have been extended to these editors, since 
they indeed delivered the writings, in the form in which they 
were to be possessed by the Church. This gives rise to the 



550 §85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

difficulty, that after the Church had entered upon the posses- 
sion of such writings, unauthorized editors still tried to intro- 
duce modifications, which did not belong to them, and these 
of course must be excluded. This indeed is related to the 
general position occupied by the Church over against the 
Scripture, which tends at no time to allow the certainty of 
faith to be supplanted by the certainty of intellect. As soon 
as it is thought that the holy ore of the Scripture can be 
weighed in the balance with mathematical accuracy, the eye 
of faith becomes clouded, and the gold is less clearly seen. 

The answer to the question as to our right to accept such 
a graphic inspiration is given in §§ 77 and 78. It is the self- 
witness QavTOfxapTvpiov) of the Scripture, which it gives of 
itself in the central revelation of the Christ. Christ indeed 
gives us no theory of graphic inspiration, but the nature of 
the authority, which He and His apostles after Him attributed 
to the Scripture of His times, admits of no other solution. 
The " all Scripture is theopneustic " is not said of the inspira- 
tion of the psalmists, wise men, and prophets, but of the 
products of the writers. This certainly declares that they 
remained writers in the strictest sense, even as compilers 
and examiners of their material, as compositors and in 
artistic grouping of the contents, but that in all these func- 
tions the Holy Spirit worked so effectively upon the action 
of their human minds, that thereby their product obtained 
Divine authority. Of course not in the sense that the con- 
tent of what they rehearsed obtained thereby a Divine char- 
acter. When they relate what Shimei said, it does not make 
his demoniacal language Divine, but it certifies that Shimei 
spake these evil words ; always impressionistically, however, 
the same as in the New Testament. When in the four Gos- 
pels Jesus, on the same occasion, is made to say words that 
are different in form of expression, it is impossible that He 
should have used these four forms at once. The Holy 
Spirit, however, merely intends to make an impression upon 
the Church which wholly corresponds to what Jesus said. 
The same is the case with what is written in the Old Testa- 
ment. The composition of this had taken place under one 



Chap. II] § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION 551 

continuous authority, which justifies citation with an " it is 
written," such as was done by Jesus, but which modified it- 
self in nature and character according to the claims of the 
content. 

For him who has been brought to the Christ, and who on 
his knees worships Him as his Lord and his God, the end 
of all contradiction is hereby reached. When the Christ, 
whose spirit witnessed beforehand in the prophets, attributes 
such authority to the Scripture of the Old Covenant, and by 
His apostles indicates the ground for that authority in the 
Theopneusty, there is no power that can prevent the recog- 
nition of that authority by him who believes in Jesus, l^ot 
to recognize it would avenge itself in the representation that 
in the very holiest things Christ had wholly mistaken Him- 
self. This would imply the loss of his Saviour. The objec- 
tion will not do, that one learns to know the Christ from 
the Scripture, so that faith in the Saviour can follow only 
upon a preceding faith on the Scripture. The reading of the 
Scripture as such, without more, will never be able to bring 
one single soul from death unto life. The Scripture by 
itself is as dull as a diamond in the dark ; and as the dia- 
mond glistens only when entered by a ray of light, the 
Scripture has power to charm the eye of the soul only when 
seen in the light of the Holy Spirit. Christ lives, and by 
His Holy Spirit He still works upon the heart and in the 
consciousness of God's elect. Sometimes palingenesis takes 
place in very infancy. If this were not so, all children 
dying young should have to be considered as lost. Dur- 
ing the period of early bringing up, many children show that 
the enmity against God was broken in their youthful hearts, 
before they came to read the Scripture. In fact, it is in- 
correct to say, that we come to the Scripture first, and by 
the Scripture to Christ. Even when, after having learned 
to read the Scripture, in later years one comes to Christ 
as his Saviour, the Scripture may cooperate instrumentally, 
but in principle the act of regeneration ever proceeds from 
heaven, from God, by His Christ; while, on the other hand, 
without this avcodev (from above) the most careful study 



552 § 85. GRAPHICAL INSPIRATION [Div. Ill 

of the Scripture can never lead to regeneration, nor to a 
" being planted together " with Christ. Tradition, supported 
and verified by the Scripture, is surely the ground of a 
purely historic faith in Christ, but this faith at large fails, as 
soon as another interpretation of the Scripture gains the day. 
The outcome shows, that where, on the other hand, the revela- 
tion of power from heaven (av(o6ev) really has taken place, 
and transformed the mode of the soul's life and conscious- 
ness, even in times of spiritual barrenness, the worship of 
Christ has again and again revived; and amid general 
negation, the most learned individuals have bowed again to 
the authority of the Scripture, in the same way in which 
Jesus recognized it. The words once spoken by Jesus in the 
temple at Jerusalem (John vii. 17), "If any man willeth to 
do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of 
God," is truly the canon here. In Christ we only see and 
handle the Divine, when transformed in our inner being and 
life, and without this preceding change of heart and our 
acceptance with Christ, even though an angel were to come 
down from heaven in visible form, no one would ever sub- 
ject himself to the word of God. The starting-point must 
ever lie in our inner ego^ and without this starting-point in 
sympathy with the revelation of the Scripture, everything 
in us tends to disown the authority of the Scripture, and 
to resist it with all our powers. 

That our human ego^ nevertheless, can be brought to accept 
and appropriate to itself the special revelation, is a result of 
the fact that of all the ways and means of inspiration, the 
self-revealing God has never employed any but those which 
were present in man by virtue of creation. The whole ques- 
tion of inspiration virtually amounts to this : whether God 
shall be denied or granted the sovereign right of employing, 
if so needed and desired, the factors which He Himself 
created in man, by which to communicate to man what He 
purposed to reveal respecting the maintenance of His own 
majesty, the execution of His world-plan, and the salvation 
of His elect. 



Chap. II] § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI 553 

§ 86. Testimonium Spiritus Sanctis or The Witness of the 

Holy Spirit 

The point of view held by our Reformers is (1) that true 
faith is a gift of God, the fruit of an operation of the Holy 
Spirit ; and (2) that true faith, as the Heidelberg Catechism 
teaches, first of all consists of this, " that I hold for truth all 
that God has revealed to us in His Word." This agrees en- 
tirely with what was said at the close of the former section. 
Not merely historical, but true faith is unthinkable in the sin- 
ner, except he embrace "the Christ and all His benefits." 
This, however, by no means exhausts the meaning of what is 
understood by the " witness of the Holy Spirit," or the testi- 
monium Spiritus Sancti. This goes far deeper. Although it 
is entirely logical, that he who believes on Christ as God mani- 
fest in the flesh, cannot simultaneously reject the positive and 
definite witness borne by that Christ concerning the Scriptures 
of the Old Covenant, this proof for graphic inspiration is, 
and always remains, a proof obtained by inference, and not 
by one's own apprehension. The two grounds for faith in 
graphic inspiration must be carefully distinguished, for, though 
the faith that rests upon the testimony of Christ is more abso- 
lute in character, the " witness of the Holy Spirit," though it 
matures more slowly, is clearer and more in keeping with the 
freedom of the child of God. It is with this as it was with 
the people of Sychar, who first believed because of the say- 
ings of the woman, and later believed on the ground of their 
own sight. The link between these two is the authority of 
the Church (auctoritas ecclesiae). Although the Reformers 
rightly contested the auctoritas imperii^ as they called it, viz. 
the imperial authority^ which Rome attributes to the utter- 
ance of the ecclesiastical institutions, they never denied the 
authority of dignity (auctoritas dignitatis') of the Church as 
an organism, nor of the Church as an institution. From the 
ethical side it has been made to appear, in recent times, that 
our faith in the Scripture floats on the faith of the believers^ 
in distinction from the authority of the Church, and this re- 
fers to an important element which was originally too much 



551 § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR [Div. Ill 

neglected. An unpardonable mistake, however, was com- 
mitted, from the ethical side, when this was indicated as the 
starting-point (So? julol ttov aroi)^ and, worse still, when it was 
left to this so-called " faith of the believers " to decide what 
should be accepted from the Scripture, and what was to be 
rejected from its content. To be able to furnish such a testi- 
mony, the believers must have an authoritative organ, i.e. it 
must appear as an instituted body. Thus we would have 
come back to Rome's shibboleth, " the Church teaches," 
Ecclesia docet. Since, on the other hand, " the faith of the 
believers " was taken, as it voices itself without this organ, all 
certainty, of course, was wanting, and in the stead of " the 
faith of the believers," there now appeared the interpretation 
of " the faith of the believers," as given by A or B. And this 
resulted in the free use of this pleasing title for all that was 
held true by individual ministers and their private circles. 
What thus presented itself as an objective, solid basis, ap- 
pears to have been nothing but a subjective soil of sand. 
Moreover, in this wise " the believers " as such were exalted 
above the Christ. For where Christ had testified in the 
strictest sense to a graphic inspiration of the Old Testament, 
" the believers " contradicted Him, declared that this interpre- 
tation was erroneous, and consequently faith was to be pinned 
to what was claimed by "the believing circle," and not to 
what was confessed by Him. 

The element of truth in this representation is, that the 
Church forms a link in a twofold way between faith in the 
inspiration of the Scripture upon the authority of Christ, and 
faith in this inspiration on the ground of the testimony of the 
Holy Spirit. In the first place, it cannot be denied that the 
Church is one of the factors by which he who formerly stood 
out of Christ is brought to Christ. " How shall they believe 
in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they 
hear without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14). However much 
regeneration may be an act of God in the heart of the sinner, 
immediately effected, independently of all instrumental help, 
no conscious faith on Christ can develop itself from this 
" seed of God " (^o-Trepjua 6eov) without preaching, which intro- 



Chap. II] THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 555 

duces the image of Christ and His work into the human con- 
sciousness. Preaching is here taken in the broadest possible 
sense, not merely as catechization and as preaching of the 
Word, but as including all communication of man to man, 
orally or in writing, by which the form of Christ is brought 
in relief before the seeking eye of faith. So far, therefore, 
the link of the Church claims our notice, and in proportion 
as this appearance of the Church is purer or less pure, faith 
in Christ will be richer or poorer. Augustine's saying, 
"Evangelio non crederem nisi ecclesiae me moveret autori- 
tas " (i.e. " I could not have believed the Gospel, except as 
moved by the authority of the Church"), contains some- 
thing more still. In this saying, the Church appears not 
merely as the preacher of truth, but as an imposing phenom- 
enon in life which exerts a moral power, and which, itself 
being a work of Christ, bears witness to the "founder of 
the Church" (auctor ecclesiae). It is the revelation of the 
spiritual power of Christ in His Church, which as a spiritual 
reality takes hold of the soul. For this very reason the inter- 
pretation of this word of Augustine by the Romish dogmati- 
cians, as an auctoritas imperii^ or imperial authority, to be 
attributed to the instituted Church, is wrong, and it was 
equally wrong to interpret the Gospel Evangelium as the " In- 
spired Sacred Scripture," for then Augustine should have 
begun by subjecting himself to this official authority of the 
Church. Suppose, indeed, that such an arbitrary subjec- 
tion would have been conceivable, the word moveret would 
have been put to an impossible use. An imperial authority 
does not move (movet), but commands (iubet) and compels 
(cogit). What remains of this, therefore, is no other than 
what we, too, confess; viz. that as a herald of the Gospel 
(praedicatrix Evangelii) and as an imposing spiritual phe- 
nomenon, the Church is one of the factors used by the Holy 
Spirit in bringing the regenerate to a conscious faith in Christ. 
To this is added, in the second place, the very important 
significance of " the communion of saints." Even though it 
is not impossible in the absolute sense that faith can be main- 
tained in isolation, isolation, nevertheless, goes against the 



556 § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR [Div. Ill 

nature of faith ; and it remains a question whether any one 
but Christ Himself, in that absolute sense, has stood alone 
in his faith. This is the very profound meaning of Geth- 
semane. Sin, and hence unbelief, scatters, individualizes, 
and pulverizes ; but grace, and hence faith, restores life in 
organic connection, viz. the life of each member in the body. 
And what applies to being applies also to the consciousness ; 
here it is also an " apprehending with all the saints" (Eph. 
iii. 18). The power of public opinion shows how mightily 
this factor in works upon our own conviction ; and as there 
is a public opinion in the things of the world, there is 
also a certain jides communis^ or, if you please, a public 
opinion in the communion of saints. And in so far the ethi- 
cal school maintains correctly that "the faith of the be- 
lievers " supports the faith of the individual, and exercises a 
certain authority over it. This factor works in a threefold 
way : (1) in an historical sense, in so far as the testimony of 
the ages comes to us in tradition and writings; (2) in a 
catholic sense, insomuch as the general appearance of the 
universal Church always includes a certain confession of 
faith ; and (3) in an empirical sense, if we ourselves per- 
sonally come in contact with confessors of Christ, move in 
the circles of the children of God, and thus experience 
immediately the influence of the communion of the saints. 
In this we are not dealing with the Church as an institution, 
but with the Church as an organism. And though it must 
be granted that the influence of this public opinion, if 
untrue, can inwork disastrously upon our conviction, so that 
spiritual criticism only keeps us in the right path, it is never- 
theless entirely true that this communis fides, this public 
opinion among the children of God, this ''faith of the be- 
lievers " as it may be called, imprints in our consciousness 
the image of Christ as the Saviour of the world, and sup- 
ports in us faith in the Holy Scripture. 

This, of course, cannot be the last point of support, and 
therefore the Reformers wisely appealed on principle to the 
" witness of the Holy Spirit." By this they understood a tes- 
timony that went out directly from the Holy Spirit, as author 



CuAi. II] THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 557 

of the Scripture, to our personal ego. They did not call it 
an internal (internum) but an external proof (argumentum 
externum), for the reason that it did not rise from our ego., 
but from without us, from God, it moved itself toward our 
ego. It has often, however, been wrongly represented that 
by this witness was meant in a magic sense a certain "ec- 
stasy '' or " enthusiasm," and that it consisted of a supernatu- 
ral communication from the side of God, in which it was said 
to us, " This Scripture is my Word." Thus it has been rep- 
resented by some who were less well informed, but never by 
our theologians. On the contrary, they have always protested 
against this representation ; the more since experience taught 
that all such interpretation led at once to a false mysti- 
cism, and thereby undermined the authority of the Scripture. 
For then, indeed, the revelation of God, which one imagines 
and declares himself to have received, is placed above the 
Scripture, and in the end the Scripture is rejected. No, the 
representation of the Reformers was this, that this witness is 
to be taken as " light so irradiating the mind as to affect it 
gently, and display to it the inner relations of the truth that 
had hitherto been concealed." Hence it was a subdivision 
of the enlightening, but in this instance directed immedi- 
ately upon the Holy Scripture, and not upon its inspiration, 
but its Divine quality. First one stood before the Holy 
Scripture as before a foreign object which did not suit his 
world of conceptions, and over against which, in his world- 
consciousness, one assumed essentially not merely a doubt- 
ful, but a hostile attitude. If meanwhile the change of our 
inner being has taken place by palingenesis, from which 
there has gradually sprung in our sense and in our con- 
sciousness a modified view of ourselves, of the things of this 
world, and of the unseen world, which withdraws itself from 
our natural eye, this enlightening of the Holy Spirit creates 
discord between our deepest life-consciousness and the con- 
sciousness of the world, which formerly ruled and still presses 
itself upon us. And in this struggle the Holy Spirit opens 
our eyes, that in the Holy Scripture we may see a represen- 
tation of our ego., of the world and of the eternal things, 



558 § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR [Div. Ill 

which agrees with what we seek to defend in the combat 
against the naturalistic consciousness of the world. Hence 
a process is here involved. The more deeply we are led by 
the Holy Spirit into the knowledge of ourselves as sinners, of 
the unreality of the world, and of the reality of the Divine, 
the more intense becomes this struggle, and the more evident 
grows the affinity between the work of the Holy Spirit in us 
and in that Holy Scripture. Thus the veil is gradually 
being pushed aside, the eye turns toward the Divine light 
that radiates from the Scripture, and now our inner ego sees 
its imposing superiority. We see it as one born blind, who 
being healed, sees the beauty of colors, or as one deaf, whose 
hearing being restored, catches the melodies from the world of 
sounds, and with his whole soul delights himself in them. 

In this connection the so-called internal proof for the 
Divine character of the Holy Scripture must also be under- 
stood. In a later period it has been made to appear that the 
" heavenly majesty of the doctrines, the marvellous complete- 
ness of the prophecies, the wonderful miracles, the consent 
of all its parts, the divineness of the discourse," and so much 
more, formed a system of outward proofs able to convince 
the reason without enlightenment ; but our first theologians, 
at least, did not attach such a meaning to them. They 
taught that these inner relations of the Scripture were under- 
stood, and thus were able to serve their real purpose only 
when, by enlightening, the spiritual understanding had been 
clarified and purified. He only, who in palingenesis had 
experienced a miracle in his own person, ceased to react 
against miracles, but rather invoked them himself. He who 
had observed the fulfilment of several prophecies in his own 
spiritual life, understood the relation between prophecy and 
its fulfilment. He who heard the music of the Divine 
melody of redemption in his own soul was rapt in wonder 
(rapiebatur in admirationem), as they expressed it, in listen- 
ing to the Oratorio of Salvation proceeding from the heavenly 
majesty of doctrine in the Holy Scripture. As the Confessio 
Belgica states in Art. 9, that we even believe the mystery of 
the Trinity " from their operations, and chiefly by those we 



Chap. II] THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 559 

feel in ourselves," our faith in the Divine character of the 
Scripture rests upon the experience of spiritual life that ad- 
dresses us from that Scripture. That similarity of personal 
experience fosters affinity, quickens sympathy and opens eye 
and ear. In by far the greater number of cases this testimo- 
nium Spiritus Sancti works gradually and unobserved. The 
*' enlightening " increases gradually in intensity, and in pro- 
portion as it grows stronger we see more, and see with more 
certainty, and stand the more firmly. Sometimes, however, 
this witness of the Holy Spirit becomes more incisive in 
character. This is especially noticeable in days of general 
apostasy, and then the child of God is fully conscious of 
this incisive inworking. Living in a society of high intel- 
lectual development, and taking notice of what is contributed 
by reason without enlightening to enervate the Divine char- 
acter of the Holy Scripture, inwardly most painful discord is 
born. Doubt is contagious. When with firm tread you 
walk along your well-chosen way, and without hesitancy 
at the cross-road turn to the right, you are involuntarily 
brought to a standstill, and shocked for a moment in your 
feeling of assurance, when three or four persons call out after 
you that you should turn to the left. As in sanctification 
you are made to err in this way from time to time with 
respect to the Holy Scripture, you may be led to doubt, 
and even for a while pursue wrong paths. But this will not 
be permanent. The work of grace is not left to yourself, but 
with a firm hand is guided by the Holy Spirit, who in no 
mechanical way, but by a richer spiritual experience, at 
length restores you to seeing again what is truly Divine. 
And when the Holy Spirit enters accusation against us in 
our own soul that we kick against the pricks, and depend 
more on our own and Satan's word than on His Word, and 
moves and implores us with groanings unspeakable that for 
the sake of the glory of God and our salvation we attach 
again a greater significance to His Word than to any other, 
then there comes that incisive, and therefore decisive, mo- 
ment when the child of God lays the hand on his mouth, 
and with shame and confusion turns his back upon doubt, in 



560 § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR [Div. Ill 

order that in contrition and sorrow he may hearken again 
to the Holy Spirit as the speaker in His Word. As said 
before, however, this incisive character is not borne by the 
witness of the Holy Spirit in every person, nor at all times. 
As the conversion of many people has taken place almost 
without observation, which often happens in the quieter walks 
of Christian life, and the conversion of a few only, who at 
first wandered far off, is incisive like that of an Augustine, 
such also is the case here. For the most part this witness 
works gradually and unobserved, and only in exceptional 
cases is it as lightning that suddenly flames through the 
skies. 

From the nature of this witness of the Holy Spirit, it 
follows at the same time, that it begins with binding us 
simply to the Holy Scripture in its centrum. It is the central 
truth concerning our ego^ concerning the world about us, 
and of the true reality which is with God, that takes hold of 
us, convinces and follows after us, until we give ourselves 
captive to it. This central truth will take hold of one by 
this, and of another by that utterance, in proportion as our 
inner life is tuned to it ; but the first impressions will always 
cause us to descend into the depths of misery and ascend to 
the heights of redemption. How far the authority, which 
from this spiritual centrum obtains its hold on us, extends 
itself later to those things in the Scripture that lie on the 
periphery, is a question devoid at first of all spiritual sig- 
nificance. Conditions are conceivable in which, after one is 
captured centrally by the Scripture, the clashing is continued 
for many years between our thinking and acting on the one 
hand, and that which the Scripture lays upon us in the name 
of the Lord as faith and practice (credenda and agenda). 
Gradually, however, an ever more vitally organic relation 
begins to reveal itself between the centrum of the Scripture 
and its periphery, between its fundamental and its derivative 
thoughts, and between its utterances and the facts it com- 
municates. That authority which at first addressed us from 
that centrum only, now begins to appear to us from what has 
proceeded from that centrum. We feel ourselves more and 



Chap. II] THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 561 

more captivated by a power, whose centrum cannot be 
accepted without demanding and then compelling all un- 
observedly an ever more general consent for its entire 
appearance, and all its utterances. Thus it ends as ScripUire 
by imposing sacred obligations upon us, as Holy Book by 
exercising over us moral compulsion and spiritual power. 
And in the end the connection between its form and content 
appears so inseparable, that even the exceptional parts of its 
form appeal to us, and, in form and content both, the Script- 
ure comes to stand before us as an authority from God. 

But this process of conviction worked in us by the Spirit, 
is always a spiritual work, which has nothing in common 
with the learning of the schools ; it is moreover incapable 
of maintaining itself theoretically and of continuing itself 
according to a definable system. By itself it tends no further 
than to bear spiritual testimony to our personal, regenerated 
ego concerning the Divine character of everything the Holy 
Scripture teaches and reveals ; and without more, the truth, 
for instance, of graphic inspiration can never be derived from 
it. If, however, an absolute certainty concerning this Divine 
character of the content of the Scripture has been sealed in 
the personal consciousness of man by this witness of the 
Holy Spirit, the effect of this goes back to the two former 
stages of the public opinion (communis fides), and the cleav- 
ing to Christ. With this conviction, which is now his own for 
good and always, he, who has been set free from the veil that 
darkly hung between, does not stand alone, but feels himself 
assimilated by the illuminated consciousness which in the 
communion of the saints is distinguished from the natural 
consciousness of the world. This assimilation becomes the 
stronger, according to the greater vitality of the child of 
God in him, by which he is evermore being changed into the 
image of the Son of God. Thus there originates a communion 
of consciousness not merely with those round about us, but 
also with the generation of saints of former ages, affinity of 
life with the saints that have gone before, unity of soul- 
conceptions with the martyrs, with the fathers of the Church, 
with the apostles, and so at length with Christ Himself and 



562 § 86. TESTIMONIUM SPIRITUS SANCTI, OR [Div. Ill 

with the faithful of the Old Covenant. In the life-conscious- 
ness of that sacred circle the positive conviction prevails, 
that we have a graphically inspired Scripture, on which we 
lean and by which we live ; and that this is not contingent, 
nor accidental, but necessary. This faith in the Scripture is 
found as an indispensable and an entirely natural component 
part in the life-consciousness of this circle. And when in 
experience the riches of the Scripture contents become ever 
more precious to the heart, resistance is no longer possible. 
The power of assimilation is too strong, the general unsanc- 
tified human consciousness loses all its power, and at length 
the believer must accept the equally general, but now sanc- 
tified, human consciousness, including this component part of 
its content. If then, finally, the believer goes back to the 
first stage in his Christian life, i.e. to his personal faith in his 
Saviour, and realizes that Christ himself has presented the 
Holy Scripture — which the common opinion in the com- 
munion of saints has adopted in its world of thought as 
theopneustic, and of the Divine truth of which, thanks to 
the " Witness of the Holy Spirit," he is himself firmly con- 
vinced — as the product of the Holy Spirit, the assurance 
of his faith on this point is immovably established, and to 
him the Scripture itself is the principium^ i.e., the starting- 
point, from which proceeds all knowledge of God, i.e. all 
theology. 

In this sense the Holy Scripture was the prineipium of 
Theology to our fathers, and in the same sense it is this to 
us. Hence this prineipium, as such, can be no conclusion 
from other premises, but is itself the premise, from which 
all other conclusions are drawn. Of course this does not 
dismiss the fact, that objections, derived from the common 
norma of our thought, can still be entered against the Holy 
Scripture and its alleged character ; in this, indeed, every one 
should be left free, and these objections it is the task of The- 
ology squarely to face. This, however, can be considered only 
in the science of the canon (disciplina canonicae) and the 
science of the text (ars textualis). We merely observe that 
on the one hand this critical task should not be impeded in 



Chap. II] THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 563 

the least, provided it is clearly understood on the other hand 
that the failure of your first efforts to solve such critical ob- 
jections can rob you of the certainty of your princijnum, as 
little as success can strengthen it. Assurance of faith and 
demonstration are two entirely heterogeneous things. And 
he who, in whatever department, still seeks to demonstrate 
his principium^ simply shows that he does not know what is 
to be understood by a principium. 



CHAPTER III 

THE METHOD OF THEOLOGY 

§ 87. What is demanded hy the Nature of its Principium 

The legend is still current that the Reformers intended to 
represent the Holy Scripture as a sort of a code, in which 
certain articles were set down in ready form, some as things 
to be believed, and some as rules for practice (credenda and 
agenda). According to this representation the Holy Script- 
ure consists of four parts : (1) a notarially prepared official 
report of certain facts ; (2) an exposition of certain doctrines 
drawn up by way of articles ; (3) an instituted law in the 
form of rules; and (4) an official program of things to come. 
Over against this legend stands the fact that the content and 
the character of the Holy Scripture correspond in no particu- 
lar to this representation, and that psychologically it will not 
do to attribute such a view of the Holy Scripture to any theo- 
logian worthy the name. This legend, however, is not the 
product of pure invention. The way in which Scholastics 
used to demonstrate from the Holy Scripture consisted almost 
exclusively of citations of this or that Bible text. Neither 
did the Reformers abandon this method entirely ; they made 
free use of it ; but no one of them employed this method ex- 
clusively. They compared Scripture with Scripture. They 
looked for an analogy of faith. They were thus led to enter 
more deeply into the organic life of the Scripture. And he 
who gives Yoetius' treatise quousque sese extendat S. Scripturae 
auctoritas f (Select. Disp., Tom. I, p. 29) even a hasty perusal 
only, perceives at once that the view-point held by the theo- 
logians of that day was very just. The narrator of this legend 
is so far correct, however, that in the eighteenth and begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, under the influences of pietism 
and methodism, this unscientific method became ever more 

564 



Chap. Ill] §87. WHAT ITS PRINCIPIUM DEMANDS 565 

popular, and that this grotesque representation of the Holy 
Scripture found acceptance with the less thoughtful among 
simple believers. Scripture-proof seemed to them to be pre- 
sented only by the quotation of some Bible verse that literally 
and fully expressed the given assertion. This is a severe 
demand, which, on the other hand, excuses one from all further 
investigation; and, provided you but quote Scripture, does 
not inquire whether your citation is borrowed from the Old 
Testament or the New, whether it was spoken by Job or by 
his friends, or whether it occurs absolutely, or in application 
to a given case. This makes the Bible your code, a concord- 
ance your register, and with the help of that register you 
quote from that code as occasion requires. 

It needs scarcely be said that this method is utterly 
objectionable. If this were the true method, the Holy 
Scripture would have to be an entirely differently compiled 
book from what it is. As to its facts, it should present an 
accurate, precise, singular story made up in notarial form. 
It would have to give the program of things to come with 
the indication of persons, place, time and succession of the 
several acts in the drama still to be performed. With respect 
to truths it ought to present this in the form of a precisely 
formulated and systematically constructed dogmatic. And as 
for the rules of practice^ you ought to find in the Holy Script- 
ure a regular codification of a series of general and concretely 
applied directions, indicating what you should do and leave 
undone. This is no exaggeration. The question of the Holy 
Scripture involves nothing short of the question of a Divine 
authority^ which imposes faith in facts and teachings, and 
subjection to rules and commandments. Hence your demon- 
stration must be unimpeachable. And the method that is 
applicable only to an authenticated official report, a carefully 
formulated confession and an accurately recorded law, must 
be objected to as long as it is not shown that the Scripture, 
from which the quotation is made, exhibits the character 
asserted. If such, however, is not the case, and if on the 
contrary it is certain that the whole disposition, nature and 
character of the Holy Scripture resemble in no particular 



566 § 87. WHAT IS DEMANDED BY [Diy. Ill 

such an official report and codification, it needs no further 
comment that this method is altogether useless and has no 
claim therefore on our consideration. 

Nevertheless it would be a mistake to explain the popu- 
larity which this objectionable method captured for itself, on 
the simple ground of a lack of understanding. Call to mind 
the use made of the Old Testament Scripture by Christ and 
His apostles, and it not infrequently has the appearance that 
they freely followed this objectionable method. If it can 
readily be shown that Christ and His apostles also argue from 
the Scripture in an entirely different way (see Matt. xix. 8 
and Heb. vii.), the fact nevertheless cannot be denied that 
literal citations from the Old Testament, as " the Scripture " or 
" it is written," repeatedly occur in the Gospels and in the 
apostolic discourses and epistles. Hence a distinction here is 
necessary. If we note in what form the Holy Scripture pre- 
sents itself to us, it certainly has nothing in common with an 
official report or a code ; but it contains, nevertheless, extended 
series of definite and positive utterances respecting faith and 
practice, which utterances leave nothing to be desired either 
in clearness or in accuracy of formulation. Such utterances 
stand not by themselves, but occur mostly in organic connec- 
tion with events and conversations. The flower in bloom that 
exhales its fragrance is attached to a stem, and as a rule that 
stem is still joined to the plant. But even so, that utterance 
is there, and by its positiveness demands a hearing. Hence 
with reference to such utterances the task of the human mind 
has been reduced to a minimum. In controversy and exhor- 
tation these utterances render most ready service. And this 
explains the fact that the appeal to this category of utterances 
has occurred most often, still occurs, and ever will continue 
to occur. Even in the hour of dying it is this sort of utter- 
ances that refreshes and comforts most quickly and sooth- 
ingly, and with the lowly especially will ever carry the most 
telling effect. But though we grant this, and though this 
easily explains the fact that the methodistic idea so quickly 
gained the day, it should not be admitted for a moment that 
this use of the Scripture is the general and exclusive method. 



Chap. Ill] THE NATURE OF ITS PRINCIPIUM 567 

The task imposed on us is much more difficult and intricate ; 
and so far from consisting of a mechanical quotation with the 
help of the concordance, the production of what the Scripture 
contains demands gigantic labor. Beyond doubt the ectype 
of the archetypal self-knowledge of God is contained in the 
Scripture according to human capacity with respect to both 
fallen and regenerate man (pro mensura humana, respectu 
hominis lapsi, and pro captu hominis renati) ; but for the most 
part in the sense in which it can be said by the mine-owner, 
that gold is at hand, when with folded arms he looks across 
the fields, beneath which his gold-mines hide. The special 
revelation does not encourage idleness, neither does it intend 
to offer you the knowledge of God as bread baked and cut, 
but it is so constructed and it is presented in such a form, 
that the utmost effort is required to reach the desired re- 
sults. With reference also to this, you eat no bread except 
in the sweat of your brow. We do not imply that this whole 
task must be performed by every believer personally. The 
very best of us would faint beneath its load. But we recall 
what has been said before, viz., that the subject of science is 
not the individual, but the consciousness of humanity ; and 
that therefore in the same way the subject of the science of 
theology is not the individual believer, but the consciousness 
of our regenerated race. Hence it is a task which is in 
process century upon century, and from its very nature is 
still far from being completed. And in the absolute sense 
it can as little be completed as any other scientific task. In 
the Holy Scripture God the Lord offers us ectypal theology 
in an organically connected section of human life, permeated 
by many Divine agencies, out of which a number of blindingly 
brilliant utterances strike out as sparks from fire. But the 
treasures thus presented are without further effort not yet 
reflected in and reproduced bi/ the consciousness of regener- 
ated man. To realize this purpose our thinking consciousness 
must descend into this gold mine, and dig out from its treas- 
ure, and then assimilate that treasure thus obtained ; and not 
leave it as something apart from the other content of our con- 
sciousness, but systematize it with all the rest into one whole. 



568 §87. WHAT IS DEMANDED BY [Div. Ill 

Christian thinking, i.e. scientific theology, has heen at work 
on this task for eighteen centuries ; among all nations ; under 
all sorts of constellations. This had to be so, simply because 
no single nation represents the absolute consciousness of hu- 
manity, but every nation, and every period of time, according 
to their nature and opportunity, has the power and the ca- 
pacity to do this in a peculiar way ; and because the natural 
content of the consciousness, with which this knowledge of 
God must be placed in connection, continually changes. 

But amid all these changes the threefold task is ever 
prosecuted: (1) to determine, (2) to assimilate and (3) to 
reproduce the contents of the Holy Scripture. This task of 
determination covers, indeed, a broad field, and is, moreover, 
exceedingly intricate. The pertinent utterances of Scripture 
are, of course, invaluable aids ; but more than aids they are 
not. The content of the Scripture lies before you in the 
form of an historic process, which covers centuries, and, there- 
fore, ever presents itself in different forms. The Scripture 
reveals ectypal theology mostly in facts, which must be 
understood; in symbols and types, which must be interpreted. 
All sorts of persons make their appearance in strange com- 
mingling, one of whom is, and another is not, a partaker of 
Divine grace. The rule for practice presents itself in nu- 
merous concrete applications, from which the general rule 
can only be derived by dint of logical thinking. Thus what 
stands written is not merely to be understood as it was meant 
by the writer, but its significance must be estimated in 
separation from its accidental connection. The several rev- 
elations must be taken in their true unity after the analogy 
of faith. And, finally, from behind the meaning of the 
writers there must be brought out the things, which often 
they themselves did not perceive, but which, nevertheless, 
they were called upon to announce to the world, as the mys- 
tery of the thoughts of God inworked in their thoughts. 
Hence, the free citation of pertinent utterances is lawful; 
but the person should be considered who spoke them, the 
antithesis which they opposed, the cause that invited them, 
as well as the persons to whom they were directed. If this 



Chap. Ill] THE NATURE OF ITS rRINCIPIUM 569 

had been observed, the statement, for instance, "Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth 
out of the mouth of God," would never have been misused, 
to represent the spiritual needs as more important than the 
material needs. The thoughtless citation of this has been 
very misleading; and this is the more serious, since such 
classic utterances are indeed authoritative, and when wrongly 
interpreted confuse and mislead. 

In the second place, follows the task of assimilating the 
ectypal theology offered us in the Scripture. We do not 
speak now of the action of the spiritual factors required 
for this, but limit ourselves exclusively to the task of taking 
up into our human consciousness the content found. This 
content to be assimilated comes to us in language both sym- 
bolical and mystical, which reveals and again conceals. Hence, 
the purpose must be to analyze this content, to transpose the 
parts discovered into conceptions, and to reconstruct these 
conceptions thus found into a synthesis adapted to our think- 
ing. This is the more exceedingly difficult because an analy- 
sis made too hastily so readily destroys the mystical element, 
and thus leads to rationalism, while, on the other hand, the 
synthesis must be able to enter into our thinking. To this 
the fact is added that in this work no one is able to separate 
himself from his personal limitation and from his limited per- 
sonality. This assimilation is, therefore, possible for individu- 
als only in so far as the limits of their spiritual and mental 
action extends, and still it should ever be our effort to assimi- 
late in such a way as to promote this assimilation-process in 
others. Otherwise there might, indeed, be a spiritual up- 
building of self, but no scientific study. If there is to be 
scientific study, one must be able, by giving an account, to 
objectify the assimilation-process one has himself experi- 
enced. This task demands intense application of thought, 
because it is not enough that we take up in ourselves the 
loose elements of the revelation, but we must take those ele- 
ments as constitutive parts of one organic whole, and thus in 
our thoughts, also, order them in one system. This would 
require great energy of thought in a consciousness otherwise 



570 § 87. WHAT ITS PRINCIPIUM DEMANDS [Div, III 

empty ; but it does this the more, since our consciousness is 
already occupied. Now it becomes our duty to expel from 
our consciousness what is criticised by revelation as untrue, 
and to weave together what remains with the content of reve- 
lation, so that the unity of our world- and life- view shall not 
be lost. 

And then follows the third part of the task, by which we 
are called to reproduce what is thus acquired. The duty of 
witness-bearing and confession calls us to this third action, 
but also, without abandoning this practical end, the claim of 
science itself. Apart, also, from the maintenance of God's 
honor in the face of the denier of His truth, God counts it His 
glory that in the human consciousness which He had dis- 
posed to His truth, and which we had applied to the service of 
error and falsehood. His truth is again reflected. The Script- 
ure offers us the grain of wheats but we may not rest until 
the golden ears are seen in the fields^ by which to prove 
the power potentially hidden in the seed. Hence, it is not 
enough that the knowledge of God, which, as a flower in the 
bud, is hidden and covered in the Scripture, is set forth by us 
in its excellency ; but that bud must be unfolded, the flower 
must make exhibition of its beauty, and scent the air with its 
fragrance. This can be done spiritually by piety of mind, 
practically by deeds of faith, sesthetically in hymns, pareneti- 
cally in exhortation, but must also be done by scientific ex- 
position and description. 

No theologian, therefore, can go to work in an empirical 
or in a speculative manner. He who empirically takes reli- 
gious phenomena as his starting-point is no theologian, but 
an ethnological or philosophical investigator of religions. 
Neither is a speculative thinker a theologian. We do not 
question the relative right of the speculative method. Con- 
ceptions also generate, and rich harvests may be gathered 
from the fields of logical thought, but he who goes to work in 
this manner is no theologian. Theology is a positive science, 
which finds the object of its investigation, i.e. ectypal knowl- 
edge of God, in the Holy Scripture, and therefore must draw 
the insight into its object from the Scripture. The reason 



Chap. Ill] § 88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION 571 

why abstract intellectualism is insufficient for this will appear 
later ; but in so far as now we limit ourselves exclusively to 
this intellectual task, it follows from the nature of the object 
and from the principium of theology that it must determine, 
assimilate and reproduce, but with this its task is ended. 
For the sake of completeness, we may add that this includes 
the investigation of the instrument of revelation, i.e. the 
Holy Scripture ; which task is the more extensive, as that 
Scripture has not come to us in autographs, nor in our 
own language, but in foreign languages and in apographa, 
which are in many respects corrupt, so that it requires an 
entirely independent effort of the mind, by the study of criti- 
cism and language, so to approach the Scripture as to render 
an investigation of its content possible. Meanwhile this de- 
tracts nothing from the character of i^rincipium which is pos- 
sessed by the Holy Scripture as the effective cause of all true 
theology. In view of the full demonstration of the former 
chapter, this requires no further emphasis. 

§ 88. The Principium of Theology in Action 

Without further explanation the impression would be 
conveyed, that the method of theological investigation, as 
described in the preceding section, makes theology to termi- 
nate in dogmatics. The more so, since earlier dogmaticians 
frequently named their dogmatics " Theologia Christiana." 
Even Calvin's Institutes is based on such a supposition. It is 
readily seen, however, that in this way theology as a science 
would be curtailed. To mention one particular only, we 
ask, what would become of Church history ? In this second 
section, therefore, we observe that he who investigates a 
given object, obtains full knowledge of it only by the study 
of its states both of rest and action. This applies also to the 
ectypal knowledge of God, which, in behalf of the Church, 
is deposited in the Holy Scripture. The Word of God also 
has its action. It is " quick and powerful and sharper than, 
any two-edged sword," "a hammer that breaketh the rock- 
in pieces." It works also as a living seed that is sown, and 
which, according to the nature of the soil, germinates and 



572 § 88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION [Div. Ill 

brings forth fruit. Hence the task of the theologian is by no 
means ended when he has formulated, assimilated and repro- 
duced the content of the Word in its state of rest ; it is his 
duty, also, to trace the working of this principium, when the 
fountain inflowing. After it was finished, the Holy Scripture 
was not hidden in some sacred grotto, to wait for the theolo- 
gian to read and to make scientific exhibition of its content ; 
no, it was carried into the world, by reading and recitation, 
by teaching and by preaching, in apologetic and in polemic 
writings. And once brought into the world, it has exerted 
an influence upon the consciousness-form of the circle which 
it entered. Both its authority, and the consequent activity 
which it created, are no mean factors in the rise of an eccle- 
siastical confession and in the institution of an ecclesiastical 
communion. The Holy Scripture and the Church, therefore, 
are no foreign phenomena to each other, but the former should 
be looked upon as the mother of the latter. Not that the 
Word by itself was able to found a Church or a church life. 
The Holy Scripture does not possess such an inherent mys- 
tical power, and it is self-evident that the transcendental ac- 
tion of the regeneration of the elect had to go hand in hand 
with the noetic action of the Word, in order to give rise to 
the Church and to maintain it. This second element, also, 
will be explained later. But however much it may be bound 
to this spiritual antecedent, in itself the church-forming and 
church-maintaining action of the Word cannot be denied, and, 
cum grano salis, the domain of the Church can be described 
as the domain within which the Holy Scripture prevails and 
operates. 

From this it follows that he who tries to understand the 
Holy Scripture, and to reproduce its content in a scientific 
way, may not pass its action by, nor the product of this 
action. Theological science, therefore, must also institute 
an investigation into the Church, into its character, jurisdic- 
tion, history, etc. He who neglects this has not investigated 
his subject fully. It cannot be said, therefore, that church 
history, church law, etc., are added to the real theological 
studies as so many loose supplements. On the contrary, in 



Chap. Ill] § 88. THE PRI^'CIPIUM IN ACTION 573 

the theological whole they form organic, and therefore indis- 
pensable, members. If it is not in itself objectionable to 
compare the Holy Scripture to a gold mine, this compari- 
son nevertheless fails as soon as an attempt is made to view 
the method of theology as a whole. Then, indeed, there is 
not a question of a quiescent, passive gold mine which awaits 
the coming of a miner, but rather of a power propelled by the 
Holy Spirit, and propelling the spirits of men, which has drawn 
its furrows deep in the past, and which, from the living 
phenomenon of the Church, still appeals to us as a principium 
full of action. We do not step thus a handbreadth aside 
from the conception of theology as we found it. Theology 
remains to us theology in the strictest sense of the word, 
i.e. that science whose object is ectypal theology, given in 
the Holy Scripture, which is the principium of theology; 
but we refuse to eliminate the action of this Word from our 
reckoning. Not only the statics, but also the dynamics must 
be given a hearing. Hence, as a product of the energy of the 
Word, the Church may not be cut off, but it must find a 
place of its own in theological science as a whole. So far as 
this produces an effect upon the organic system of theologic 
science, this point wdll be treated in the last chapter but one 
of this volume ; here it is mentioned only in so far as it 
produces an effect upon the method of theology. In this form 
it comes nearest to what is generally called the relation of 
theology to the Church, even though it creates some sur- 
prise that this question has almost always been separated 
from the question about the method. If a fixed relation 
between theology and the Church is to be treated in another 
than an outward sense, this relation must also appear in the 
method. 

An outivard relation between the Church and the practice 
of theology is surely conceivable, in so far as the Church as an 
institution has herself taken it frequently in hand through 
the organ of her appointed theologians. She can bind such 
theologians to her confession; she can forbid them to pub- 
lish anything in conflict with it; and by discipline she can 
prevent them from every effort directed against it. But 



574 § 88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION [Div. Ill 

this outward relation is entirely accidental. Civil govern- 
ment can act along the same lines, and has often done it. 
Individuals, also, in free institutions can do the same thing. 
On the other hand, the Church may found a theological 
school of an entirely different kind, to which it allows entire 
freedom of faith and doctrine. And therefore we did not 
take our start in these outward and by consequence acci- 
dental relations, but in the essential and necessary relation 
which exists between the Holy Scripture and the Church as 
its product, in order that from this we might borrow the rule 
for the relation between the Church and theology which is 
to appear in its method. 

There is, to be sure, a theological illusion abroad, which has 
its relative right, which conveys the impression that, with the 
Holy Scripture in hand, one can independently construct his 
theology from this principium. This position was defended 
only recently by a Protestant theologian at Vienna, Professor 
Dr. Bohl {Bogmatik^ Amst. 1887, p. xiii, v) ; and it must be 
conceded to him that in the days of the Reformation, also, it 
was generally imagined that a leap backward had been taken 
across fourteen centuries, for the sake of repeating what had 
once been done by the first Christians; viz. to investigate 
the Bible, while yet no confession or dogma had been 
framed. But from the nature of the case this illusion is 
not for a moment tenable. He who harbors it claims for 
himself the unattainable honor of doing the work of bygone 
generations. And besides being unhistoric to this extent, 
he forgets also that no single person, but thinking, regen- 
erated humanity, is the subject of theology. Isolated in- 
vestigation can never furnish what can only be the result 
of the cooperation and mental effort of all. Actually, there- 
fore, this illusion is a denial of the historic and the or- 
ganic character of the study of theology, and for this reason 
it is inwardly untrue. No theologian, following the direc- 
tion of his own compass, would ever have found by him- 
self what he now confesses and defends on the ground of 
the Holy Scripture. By far the largest part of his results 
is adopted by him from theological tradition^ and even 



Chap. Ill] § 88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION 575 

the proofs, which he cites from the Scripture, at least as a 
rule, have not been discovered by himself, but have been 
suggested to him by his predecessors. Thus, it is noteworthy 
that Calvin, who, undeniably, wrote at times as though 
affected by this same illusion, appeals constantly to Augus- 
tine and Thomas Aquinas, which shows that this illusion did 
not govern his method. The true element in this represen- 
tation, meanwhile, should not be overlooked. And this is 
grasped at once if one places at the end of the way what 
Professor Dr. Bohl has held as truth at its beginning. He 
makes it to appear as if by making a tabula rasa the theolo- 
gian reverts at once to the Holy Scripture and nothing but 
the Scripture. The actual course pursued, however, is this. 
The beginning is made under the influence of all sorts of 
other factors, while the task is not ended until, at the end of 
the way, all these factors are made to disappear, so that finally 
our well-balanced conviction rests upon nothing hut the Holy 
Scripture. Then the scaffold is taken away, and we stand 
on the pinnacle of the temple. This is the final ground that 
must be reached if the theological motive is to attain to 
its point of rest. And it is from the exalted feeling which 
then inspires the theologian that the illusion objected to 
above is born. 

Without hesitation, therefore, the factor of the Church must 
be included in theological investigation. From the life of the 
Church it appears, what activity the Holy Scripture occa- 
sions, which activity in turn sheds light upon its content. 
This would not have been the case to so great an extent if 
there had been only one interpretation of the Holy Script- 
ure prevalent in the Church ; for this would have tended to 
likeness of formulation. But such was not the case. Almost 
all possible interpretations have been tried ; all these inter- 
pretations have sought to maintain themselves and to reach 
fixed forms of expression, and the fruit and effect of these 
several interpretations are manifest in history and in present 
conditions. Hence the domain of the Holy Scripture is no 
longer unexplored territory, on the contrary it is a variegated 
highland, crossed in all directions, all the mountain passes and 



576 §88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION [Div. Ill 

paths of which are known, while the goal of each is freely 
told by experienced guides. As it would be the height of 
folly, on one's first arrival in Switzerland, to make it appear 
that he is the first to investigate the Berner Oberland, since 
common sense compels him on the contrary to begin his 
journey by making inquiry among the guides of the country, 
the same is true here. In its rich and many-sided life, ex- 
tending across so many ages, the Church tells you at once 
what fallible interpretations you need no longer try, and 
what interpretation on the other hand offers you the best 
chances for success. On this ground the claim must be put, 
that the investigator of the Holy Scripture shall take account 
of what history and the life of the Church teaches concerning 
the general points of view, from which to start his investiga- 
tion, and which paths it is useless to further reconnoitre. 

But the influence of this factor does not limit itself to this. 
The investigator does not stand outside of the Church, but is 
himself a member of it. Hence into his own consciousness 
there is interwoven the historic consciousness of his Church. 
In this historic consciousness of his Church he finds not merely 
the tradition of theologians and the data by which to form an 
estimate of the results of their studies, but also the confes- 
sional utterances of the Church. And this implies more. 
These utterances of his Church do not consist of the inter- 
pretation of one or another theologian, but of the ripest fruit 
of a spiritual and dogmatic strife, battled through by a whole 
circle of confessors in violent combat, which enlightened their 
spiritual sense, sharpened their judgment, and stimulated 
their perception of the truth; which fruit, moreover, has 
been handed down to him by the Church through its divinely 
appointed organs. It will not do, therefore, to place these 
dogmatical utterances on the same plane with the opinions 
of individual theologians. In a much deeper sense than 
they, they provide a guarantee for freedom from error, 
and he who belongs to such a Church has himself been 
moulded in part by them. This gives rise to the demand, 
that every theologian shall, in his investigations, reckon 
with all those things that are taught him by the history 



Chat. Ill] § 88. THE PRINCIPIUM IN ACTION 577 

of the churches concerning well and badly chosen paths in 
this territory to be investigated ; and, also, in the second 
place, that he shall take the dogmas of his Church as his 
guide, and that he shall not diverge from them until he is 
compelled to do this by the Word of God. Hence, one should 
not begin by doubting everything, and by experimenting to 
see whether on the ground of his own investigation he 
arrives at the same point where the confession of his Church 
stands ; but, on the contrary, he should start out from the 
assumption that his Church is right, while at the same time 
he should investigate it, and only oppose it when he finds 
himself compelled to do so by the Word of God. If such 
prove the case, of course, it must be done ; and if it con- 
cerns any point of importance, an immediate break with his 
Church is the necessary result, unless the Church herself 
should modify her confession agreeably to his view. History, 
however, teaches that ordinary differences in details of opinion 
among theologians have implied no departure from essentials, 
and that the conflict between God's Word and error in the con- 
fession has been carried to the end in those great movements 
only, which have brought about a change in the entire think- 
ing consciousness. Great carefulness is always safe. The 
proclamation of new discoveries is not always a proof of de- 
votion to the truth, it is sometimes a tribute to self-esteem. 
Nevertheless, the point of support for theology may never be 
looked for in the Church. It only finds that point of sup- 
port w^hen it shows that what the Church has offered it as 
acquired treasures, were really taken from the Scripture and 
after the rule of the Scripture. 

This decides at the same time the question, whether the 
Church should prosecute the study of theology, or whether 
theology grows on a root of its own. The question cannot 
detain us here, whether in times of need we are not warranted 
in establishing church-seminaries, and, in the absence of uni- 
versity training, to provide for a need, whose supply admits 
of no delay. There is no question here of the education of 
untrained persons for the ministry of the Word, but of theol- 
ogy as a science. And, from the nature of the case, there 



578 §89. KELATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY [Div. Ill 

can be no question of theology outside the pale of the Church, 
because outside of this pale there is neither palingenesis nor 
a spiritual enlightening, both of which are indispensable to 
theology. But from this it does not follow, that, as an insti- 
tuted corporation, the Church itself should study theology. 
This institution has a limited official task, and covers, by no 
means, the whole of our Christian life. Outside of this institu- 
tion endless factors of our human life are at work within the 
pale of the Church taken as an organism, upon each of which 
the Spirit of Christ must exert His influence. One of these 
factors is science, and so far from proceeding from the insti- 
tuted Church, science includes the Church in its object, and 
must be subservient to her in the accomplishment of her 
task. The subject of Christian science is also the subject of 
Christian theology ; or, how could theology otherwise take 
a place in the organism of science ? The instituted Church 
can never be the subject of the Christian science, and conse- 
quently it cannot be this of the science of theology. Hence, 
the dilemma: Your theology has the instituted Church for 
its subject, in which case it is no science ; or if it is a science, 
the Church as an institution cannot be its subject. 

§ 89. Relation to the Spiritual Reality 

In connection with this there is still another, no less impor- 
tant, factor which both affects theology and is indispensable 
to it. The Church owes its rise not to the Word alone, but 
in a deeper sense to the supernatural spiritual workings, 
which go out among men, and whose central point is palin- 
genesis. In a supernatural sense this creates a spiritual 
reality, which, in so far as the sphere of the consciousness 
is concerned, cannot dispense with the Holy Scripture, but 
which potentially does not proceed from the Scripture, but 
from the Holy Ghost, or if you please concentrically from 
Christ. This spiritual reality does not consist merely in the 
deed and in the thing wrought by palingenesis, but from 
this central point it radiates also subjectively in those who 
are sanctified and enlightened, and objectively finds its 
basis in the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Body of 



Chap. Ill] § 89. RELATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY 579 

Christ. The preaching of the Word joins itself to this spir- 
itual reality, becomes conscious of its inspiration, imparts 
to it a conscious form, and the Church, as it actually appears, 
is not merely the product of the Word of God, but at the 
same time of this spiritual reality. Not as an institution, but 
as an organism is she a house, of the living God. The purer 
a revelation the instituted Church is of her hidden, organic, 
spiritual life, the greater is the authority in the spiritual sense 
exercised by the Church upon the consciousness of the theo- 
logian. But that which on the other hand also is of great 
importance to the method of theology, is the fact that this 
spiritual reality alone provides that affinity to the Divine life 
which is indispensable to the knowledge of God. 

The "knowledge of God" is here taken as naturally com- 
municated knowledge, but not in the exclusively intellectual 
sense. In our self-knowledge and in our knowledge of our 
fellow-men there is also a component part, which is not 
obtained by observation and reasoning built on this, but 
which is of itself revealed in us. Without this working of the 
sense-of-self and of sympathy, abstract intellectual knowledge 
of ourselves or of others would be unable to grasp the reality 
of its object. And in like manner, on the ground of our 
creation after the Divine Image, a holy affinity and a spiritual 
sympathy with the life of God must be manifest in our spirit, 
if the revelations of the Holy Scripture are to be real to us 
and to refer to an object grasped by us as a real object. Both 
together are the constituent parts of our knowledge of God. 
Spiritual affinity to the life of God enables us to grasp the 
"things of God" as real in our deepest perception. The 
revelation of the Holy Scripture interprets that reality to our 
consciousness. There is no conscious knowledge without a 
mystic knowledge, and there is no mystic knowledge without 
the light of the Scripture that shines in our consciousness. 
Alas, that these two should be so rudely separated. For this 
gives on the one hand an intellectualism, which can do noth- 
ing but construe theoretical systems from the Scripture, and 
on the other hand a mystical attempt to attain unto a vision 
of God outside and above the Scripture. Violence is done 



580 § 89. RELATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY [Div. Ill 

to the method of theology by this intellectualism as well as 
by this one-sided mysticism. That method must adapt itself 
to the fact of the actual cooperation of both factors. This 
is possible only, when this spiritual reality is postulated in 
the theologian, and demands the consequent union of his 
spirit and the spiritual reality which exists concretely outside 
of him, and which allows him to borrow from the Scripture 
only the conscious form for this reality. The first was called 
of old not incorrectly Theology of our inclinations (theologia 
habitualis), or Theology of use (theologia utens) ; we should 
rather call it the mystical knowledge of God in antithesis 
with intellectual; but by whatever name it goes, from the 
nature of the case it assumes regeneration, the photismos and 
the communion of saints, since by these alone one is brought 
into this spiritual reality and becomes sufficiently spiritual to 
grasp in his innermost soul the reality of those things re- 
vealed to us in the Scripture. He who is deaf must first 
be healed from his deafness in order to be placed in true 
touch with the world of sounds. When this contact has 
been restored, the study of music can again be begun by him. 
This is the case with reference to the study of theology. 
Taken as the knowledge of God it is only conceivable, when 
the spiritual ear is opened in him who prosecutes the study, 
and to whom the reality of the unseen discovers itself. Palin- 
genesis, therefore, is a requirement which may not be aban- 
doned. Without palingenesis one stands antipathetically 
opposed to the object of theology. Hence there is no love to 
quicken communion. But we may not limit ourselves to this. 
Regeneration by itself is no enlightening. By regeneration 
the wheel of life in the centrum of our being (the wheel of 
nature or of birth, James iii. 6) is merely replaced upon its 
pivot; but this by itself has not changed the world of our 
conscious life. This occurs only when the Holy Spirit, hav- 
ing taken up His abode in us, transfers His working from this 
centrum to our facultates, to the faculty of the understanding 
by enlightening and to the faculty of the will by sanctification. 
If, in a more solemn sense than the ordinary believer, the theo- 
logian is called to enter into the revealed knowledge of God 



Chap. Ill] § 89. RELATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY 581 

with his understanding^ it is evident that so long as he lacks 
this enlightening he can make no progress. To regeneration 
and enlightening, is added in the third place the communion 
of saints. The theologian is no isolated worker, but in the 
world of thought he is in his way the organ of restored hu- 
manity. The subject of theology presents itself to us in the 
renewed consciousness of restored humanity, and every indi- 
vidual theologian allows this subject to work its effect pro 
parte virili. The farther he isolates himself from restored 
humanity the more this action must weaken, while on the 
other hand its gain in energy keeps pace with his progress in 
vital communion with this restored humanity. It is and re- 
mains an " apprehending with all the saints " (Eph. iii. 18), 
and the apostles do not hesitate to say, that by this fellow^ship 
with them alone does one come to the fellowship of the Father 
and of the Son (1 John i. 3). 

By this we do not claim, that in the field of theological 
science, intelligent persons, who still lack this palingenesis, 
photismos and fellowship, cannot furnish results that are 
productive of lasting good. The labor to be done in the field 
of theology is by no means all of one kind. This can be dis- 
tinguished into central and peripheral study. To search 
out, decipher and compare documents and monuments, for 
instance, to collect and arrange historical data, the writing of 
monographs on the Cathedral of Cologne, on some order of 
monks, or of Wessel Gansfort, etc., is altogether work which 
lies in the periphery, and which in itself has little to do with 
the research into the knowledge of God. It is all equiva- 
lent to the services which were rendered by Hiram of Tyre 
for the temple on Sion, but which had next to nothing in 
common with the sacred ministry behind the veil. These 
studies are certainly indispensable, even as the work of Hiram 
was indispensable in order that the High Priest might per- 
form his sacred office, but this did not require in the Tyrian 
architect what was required in the Minister of the Sanctuary. 
Spiritual affinity to this centrum is certainly not a matter of 
indifference in these peripherical studies. What Aholiab 
and Bezaleel did for the tabernacle, was much more inspired 



582 § 89. RELATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY [Div. Ill 

work than what Hiram wrought on Sion's mount. And if, 
instead of Hiram, a master builder of Israel, rejoicing in 
Jehovah, could have built the Temple of Solomon, the work 
undoubtedly would have been inspired by a higher impulse 
of art. Our observation merely tends to do full justice to 
the intelligence which, without being interwoven with the 
life of the Holy Spirit, has been expended upon these peri- 
pherical studies in the field of theology. 

So far as connection with the spiritual reality is merely 
put as a requisite in the theologian, it does not touch the 
method of theology. But it is not difficult to show how 
there flows an immediate result from this requisite for the 
method of theology. For fellowship with this spiritual real- 
ity is not a constant conception, but it changes and is suscep- 
tible to becoming both faint and strong. This fellowship 
with the Father and with the Son will at one time react 
strongly, and again weakly in one and the same person, and 
in the long run a lasting increase will follow. If the person 
himself were passive in this, and went through these changes 
merely as nature goes through the changes of heat and cold, 
it would not affect the method of theology. But this is not 
the case. He who has been regenerated is a fellow-worker 
with God, and according as he neglects or practises holy liv- 
ing, his fellowship with the Unseen diminishes or increases. 
And from this follows the demand of theological method, that 
the theologian shall be on the alert to feed and to strengthen 
this fellowship. He who fails in this dulls the spiritual sense 
by which he must observe what goes on in the sacred domain ; 
while on the contrary he who wants to perfect himself in 
the accuracy of his observations within this sacred domain, 
is bound to apply himself to mystical devotion as well as to 
pietistic practice of holiness. As the pianist must make his 
fingers supple in order by a greater velocity to accommodate 
them to the vibrations of the world of sounds, so the theo- 
logian must tune his inner being and hold it to that pitch 
by prayer, meditation, self-denial and daily practice in order 
to accommodate himself to the sound of heavenly things. 
Not in the sense that prayer and meditation could ever take 



Chap. Ill] § 90. THE HOLY SPIRIT AS TEACHER 583 

the place of alacrity and intelligence or of the "body of 
doctrine " (copia doctrinae). By his supple fingers the pian- 
ist cannot produce a single tone, if he has not the instrument 
itself at his disposal. But however strenuously we emphasize 
this intellectual development, unless a spiritual development 
be its guide, it degenerates of necessity into intellectualism, 
and becomes cold, barren and unfruitful. Only when the 
theologian applies himself in harmonious relation to the de- 
velopment of hoth^ does he offer himself to the Holy Spirit as 
a prepared instrument, and is able to reveal even more fully 
the strength of this instrument. 

§ 90. Tlie Holy Spwit as Teacher (Spiritus Sanctus Doctor) 

In this connection only can it be explained what has been 
implied in the worship of the Holy Spirit by the Church of 
Christ as the Teacher of the Ohurch (Doctor ecclesiae). This 
confession must now be considered, because it implies that 
the action of the human mind, in order to attain to the 
true " knowledge of God," and thus of all theology, stands 
subject to his guidance. To understand this well, we must 
first distinguish between the several sorts of activities that 
go out from the Holy Ghost. From Him all animation pro- 
ceeds, as well as the whole creation, and wherever life glows, 
its flame is ignited by the Holy Ghost. That flame is want- 
ing in the chaotic mass, and then the Holy Spirit moves as 
yet separate above the chaos. But when the chaos becomes 
cosmos^ the fiery flame of the Spirit glows and scintillates 
throughout the entire creation. In all conscious life this work- 
ing of the Holy Spirit reveals itself more intensively and 
more definitely in the psychical life of man. Not because the 
Holy Spirit is here a different one, but because this plane of life 
stands higher, possesses the form of conscious life, and is conse- 
quently able to cause the energy of the Holy Spirit to appear 
in a much higher form. In this sense all light in us, in our 
emotional life as well as in the domain of science and art, is 
light ignited by the Holy Ghost. But this does not touch 
the highest sphere of His activity. This is reached only, 
when from his side the creature places himself in conscious 



68-i § 90. THE HOLY SPIRIT AS TEACHER [Div. Ill 

communion with this energy of the Holy Spirit, whereby the 
Holy Spirit becomes the " Gemeingeist " in the organism of 
humanity. And this is wanting in the life without palin- 
genesis. There the " Gemeingeist " is sought in a national 
spirit, in a spirit of the times, in a prevailing tendency of 
spirits, and this effort sets itself in opposition to the Holy 
Spirit. But it is different with that tree of humanity 
upon which the " Edelreis " has been grafted by God. For 
humanity thus restored is identical with the bodi/ of Christ, 
and in this bodi/ of Christ no other " Gemeingeist " but the 
Holy Spirit is conceivable. This lies expressed in the Pente- 
cost miracle, by which this indwelling of the Holy Spirit was 
accomplished. Beautiful confession is made of this by the 
Heidelberg Catechism, when it speaks of the Holy Spirit as 
" He who dwells in Christ as the Head and in us as His mem- 
bers." Hence there can be but one thought entertained con- 
cerning the subject of restored humanity : viz., that it is led 
and guided by the Holy Spirit, and this is the profounder 
sense of what Jesus spake, that the Holy Spirit shall guide 
into all the truth (John xvi. 13) ; which utterance by itself 
simply implies that the Church of Christ should have a guide 
on her way, and that this guide would lead her ever more 
deeply into the knowledge of the truth. It is this Holy Spirit, 
who alone is able to "search all the deep things of God" 
(1 Cor. ii. 10). It is this same Holy Spirit who reveals 
these mysteries unto us. And finally, it is this Holy Spirit 
who, by His communion, makes us spiritual, gives us the mind 
of Christ, and thereby enables us to judge spiritually (1 Cor. 
ii. 10-16). 

From the nature of the case it is this fact that dominates 
theology. Theology is studied age after age, among all 
classes of people and in all kinds of lands, in various circles 
and under the influence of numerous factors, ecclesiastical 
and non-ecclesiastical. In itself, therefore, this sundry task 
would bear a broken and atomistic character. All unity 
and all growth would be wanting. If it is nevertheless a 
fact that this growth is not wanting, and that in the midst of 
changes and variations unity and progress are apparent, then 



Chap. Ill] § 90. THE HOLY SPIRIT AS TEACHER 585 

a higher subject, standing outside and above the subjects 
of individual theologians and dominating them, must have 
caused these many rills to flow in one bed, and in that bed 
must have determined the direction of the stream. With the 
other sciences this higher subject is given of itself in the 
immanent logica, in the Logos of the object, which corre- 
sponds to the Logos in the subject and aids the logical under- 
standing of the object after a fixed law. That higher power 
which guarantees unity and growth in these sciences is cer- 
tainly given in Creation. But such is not the case with 
theology. This directs itself to a life, which is the fruit of re- 
creation ; of re-creation in being as well as in consciousness ; 
and therefore only the Holy Spirit, who is the author of this 
double re-creation, can here give the impulse, guidance and 
direction to the spirits, and introduce unity in what goes out 
from the individuals. And this claims a still stronger 
emphasis, because the development of the re-created con- 
sciousness is conditioned by the Holy Scripture, of which the 
Holy Spirit is the "primary author" (auctor primarius). If 
it is a fact that the secondary authors (auctores secundarii) 
intended to convey much less of a meaning in their waitings 
than the Holy Spirit, under whose impulse they went to work, 
then from the nature of the case the Holy Spirit alone is able 
to reveal to the Church His rich and full intention regarding 
the Holy Scripture. Hence there is unity in the theological 
effort only because it is the selfsame Holy Spirit who gave us 
the principium of theology and superintends the effect and 
the application of this principium. The exegesis of the Holy 
Scripture is correct and complete only when the Holy Spirit 
interprets that Scripture in the Church of God. And the re- 
flection of the content of the Scripture in our consciousness, 
and the reproduction of it by our consciousness, is true and 
pure and entire only when the Holy Spirit gives command 
and direction to this activity of the re-created consciousness. 
The way in which this is done by the Church, in connection 
with the office, will be shown in the following section. Even 
without the influence of the instituted Church, it follows that 
the individual theologian should always be conscious of this 



586 § 90. THE HOLY SPIRIT AS TEACHER [Div. Ill 

working of the Holy Spirit. This is something both different 
from and greater than his mystical fellowship) with the spiritual 
reality which was explained in the former section. Without 
more, this mystical fellowship simply referred to the tenor 
of his inner life. But it is entirely different when the theo- 
logian understands and feels that he is an organ of service, 
on the ground of which he may confidently expect lasting 
fruit of his labors so long as he puts himself in the service 
of the Holy Ghost. This is entirely analogous to the differ- 
ence between the plodder on his own responsibility and the 
man of science who labors in the service of the truth. What 
in every other department of study is service of the truth, 
is here service of the Holy Ghost. Without this sense of 
service all study becomes subjectivistic, unhistorical, and ar- 
rogant, while, on the contrary, the placing of oneself at the 
service of the truth, i.e. in this instance of the Holy Ghost, 
banishes all pride, curbs the desire to be interesting by ex- 
hibiting new discoveries, feeds the desire of theological fel- 
lowship, and thereby sharpens that historic sense which 
impels the theologian to join himself to that great work of the 
Holy Spirit effected in past ages, which at most he may help 
advance a few paces. 

This, however, should not be interpreted in the sense that 
the service of the Holy Spirit is antagonistic to the service of 
the truth. The domain of palingenesis is no newly created 
ground, but the outcome of re-creation. Hence the natural 
life is subsumed in it, the natural consciousness also, i.e. those 
powers, attributes, and laws of being, to which the human 
consciousness is subject by its nature, in virtue of the creation. 
As was seen above, the light of the Holy Spirit operates also 
in this natural consciousness, and of itself this lower light is 
adopted and included in the higher. If this were not so, 
theology would be merely a mystical beholding (BecopCa^ ; 
but for the reason alone that it is so, it appears as an intel- 
lectual and rational discipline (disciplina noetica and diano- 
etica). On this depends also the old question, which from 
the days of Arius has repeated itself in the Church, even 
this : whether theology is authorized to draw out by logical 



Chap. Ill] § 91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE 587 

sequence what is not written auroXe^ec in the Holy Scripture. 
Almost every tendenc}^, whose interest it was to attach itself 
to the letter of the Scripture, and to oppose inferences from 
Scripture, has stated its objections against logical deduction 
in its polemical writings. Even by Franciscus Veronius from 
the side of Rome a similar objection was raised against 
the theology of the Reformers (see Voetius, JDisp. Theol. I. 
pp. 5-12). In theory, however, this position has been de- 
fended only by some Anabaptists, and later by the Metho- 
dists, although they themselves did not strictly adhere to it. 
This whole conception meanwhile starts out from a mechani- 
cal Scripture-view, and is not worthy of refutation. It is of 
importance only in so far as it may be asked, whether in His 
revelation the Holy Spirit was bound to logic. In principle 
this is denied by all dualistic tendencies. They view the 
spiritual life of palingenesis and the intellectual life of sin- 
ful nature as two spheres which do not touch each other. 
The refutation of this false assertion must be sought in this : 
(1) in that palingenesis is represented as a re-creation, which 
implies the subsumption of the natural life ; (2) in that the 
Holy Spirit is the author of the logical in the natural life as 
well as of the spiritual in the regenerated life; and (3) in 
that the Holy Spirit Himself, as the " Gemeingeist," leads 
and directs not merely the mystic-spiritual, but also the 
logical-dianoetical action of the Church, and therefore also of 
theology. 

§ 91. The Church and the Office 

As the result of the two preceding sections no other infer- 
ence is possible, than that theological science can only exist 
in the Church of Christ. Outside of her pale palingenesis 
is wanting, faith is wanting, and the enlightening, and the 
fellowship of saints, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit as 
" Gemeingeist." By this, however, it is by no means meant, 
that the organ for theological science is given in the insti- 
tuted Church. The conception of the instituted Church is 
much narrower than the Church of Christ when taken as the 
body of Christ, for this includes in itself all the powers and 



588 § 91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE [Div. Ill 

workings that arise from re-creation. There is a Christian 
disposition and a Christian fellowship, there is a Christian 
knowledge and a Christian art, etc., which indeed spring 
from the field of the Church and can flourish on this field 
alone, but which by no means therefore proceed from the 
instituted Church. The instituted Church finds her province 
bounded by her offices^ and these offices are limited to the 
ministry of the Word, the Sacraments, Benevolence, and 
Church government. These are the only offices that have 
been appointed as special functions in her life. All other 
expressions of Christian life do not work by the organ of 
the special offices, but by the organs of the re-created natural 
life ; the Christian family by the believing father and mother. 
Christian art by the believing artist, and Christian schools 
by the believing magister. From which it follows that in this 
domain of palingenesis science also does not come to revela- 
tion by organs specially appointed for this purpose, but by 
the regenerated natural organs. By making an exception of 
theology here, it is assigned a place outside the organism of 
Christian knowledge, which prevents it from having one and 
the same subject in common with the other, Christianly under- 
stood, sciences. If then for want of a better school, or in 
behalf of her own safety, the instituted Church may found 
a seminary for the education of her ministry, such a semi- 
nary is never a scientific institution in its absolute sense. 
Neither are we authorized, in view of such a seminary, to 
withdraw ourselves from the obligation of prosecuting the 
science of theology for its own sake. If preachers are to be 
not merely Ministers of the Word, but theologians as well, 
the university training is indispensable. 

But from this it does not follow that the instituted Church 
as such should not be of profound significance to the science 
of theology. The case indeed is this : sufficient knowledge 
of God ad hoc flows from the Holy Scripture in a three- 
fold way: personal, ecclesiastical and scientific. If now we 
consider scientific theology first, then it is clear that its 
beginnings are very slow, that its growth covers the lapse 
of ages, and that it is not only still very incomplete, but 



Chap. Ill] § 91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE 589 

it will never be finished, because as a science it can never 
be at a standstill, but will always advance without ever being 
able to reach completion. In the earlier ages especially it 
was very imperfect. If then for the sake of procuring the 
necessary knowledge of God, the Church, which we referred 
to in the second place, should have had to wait for the result 
of this study, generation after generation would have passed 
away before the Church could have begun her task. And 
this was not to be allowed. The Church had to be in 
immediate readiness. She could not be held back by any 
embarrassment. Neither has this taken place. From the 
very beginning, before there could be so much as a question 
of science, the Church has borrowed the content of her 
preaching from the Scripture and thereby has made use of a 
knowledge of God, which was sufBcient ad hoc^ i.e. for the 
life of the Church. What was needed in the churchly life 
gradually increased also, but in connection with this the 
Church unfolded the content of her preaching ever more 
richly, at the same time profiting by the fruit of scientific 
theology that gradually arose. Thus churchly confessions 
originated, which were increasingly rich and full, but these 
churchly confessions have never announced themselves as the 
results of science. And it is different again in the third place 
with the personal knowledge of God of each individual. The 
individual person, whose life is measured by the day, was still 
less able than the Church, to wait till science had ended her 
combats and finished her task. In a sense even more definite 
than the Church each individual must personally be in instant 
readiness, and have convictions, which for him, ad hoc^ can 
alone be obtained by personal faith and personal experience. 
Every other conception is unmerciful, since it is unable to 
give the elect, at every given moment, according to his several 
condition, that knowledge of God which he needs. Distinc- 
tion meanwhile is readily made between this personal^ churchly 
and scientific theology (or knowledge of God). The first 
tends to supply each child of God his comfort in life and in 
death. The second, to enable the Church to preach and to 
maintain her confession in the face of the world. And the 



590 § 91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE [Div. Ill 

third is charged with the introduction of the knowledge of 
God into the human consciousness. The first has for its circle 
the life's-sphere of the individual^ the second the circle of the 
instituted Ohurch^ and the third the circle of the church taken 
as an organism. In connection with this the form of the 
knowledge of God is distinguished also in these three ways. 
Personal faith does not formulate, but, as the fathers since 
Augustine said, " appropriates and enjoys " (utitur et fruitur). 
The churchly confession formulates in dogmata. Scientific 
theology sifts and tries, analyzes and draws inferences, con- 
structs systems and places in connection with what lies out- 
side. And, finally, the first is fruit of personal enlightenment 
and experience ; the second, of the official activity of the 
Church, also in her struggles with heresy ; and the third is 
the independent fruit of study. 

If, now, we bring this in connection with the guidance of 
the Holy Spirit, then this guidance in the case of the personal 
knowledge of God consists in the providential and spiritual 
leading, by which the heart of the individual is influenced and 
his world of thought is formed ; in the case of the ecclesiasti- 
cal knowledge of God it is the guidance of the Holy Spirit 
bestowed upon the Churches through the office ; and in the 
case of the scientific knowledge it consists in the clarifying of 
the consciousness. This, however, must not be understood in 
the sense that these three factors are isolated, and work each 
by itself. No man is a theologian in a scientific sense unless 
he is also a partaker of personal enlightenment and spiritual 
experience. For, unless this is the case, his starting-point is 
wanting, and he has no contact with the principium of the- 
ology. Neither can the theologian stand outside the church 
relation, and thus outside of personal union with the churchly 
confession, for then he finds himself outside the historic pro- 
cess, and, in fact, the organic contact is broken with the life- 
circle, within which his studies must flourish, so far as is pos- 
sible to him. The personal faith, which simply touches the 
principium, and which as being entirely individual is an ines- 
timable magnitude, needs receive no further mention here. 
For the theologian, it is the starting-point ; but it is nothing 



Chap. Ill] § 91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE 591 

more. It is very different, on the other hand, with the 
churchly confession. An objective condition lies in this. It 
is a product of the life of the Church, as in an ever richer form 
it has revealed itself officially, i.e. in ecclesiastical assemblies, 
under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Two things are 
contained in this confession. First, the self-consciousness of 
the Church, as it has developed itself historically, which, con- 
sequently, is the result of a spiritual experience and a spir- 
itual struggle that fills in the gap between the present and 
the first appearance of the Christian Church. And in the 
second place, the result of the special leading of the Holy 
Spirit, vouchsafed in the course of ages to the Church, and 
to the knowledge of God that has developed itself within her 
pale. For this reason the theologian should not undervalue 
the confession of his Church, as if in it a mere opinion pre- 
sented itself to him over against which, with equal if not 
with better right, he might place his opinion. The life of the 
Church, and the forming and reforming of her self-conscious- 
ness, is an action which is uninterruptedly continued. Scien- 
tific study unquestionably does and must exert an influence 
upon this, but for this reason this action should not sacrifice 
its independent character and motive of its own. A company 
charged with the public water-works may change the direction 
of some part of a river-bed by cutting off some needless bend 
or obstructive turn, but this does not render the company the 
original creator of the river who causes its waters to flow. In 
the same way, the scientific theologian may exert a correc- 
tive power here and there upon the confessional life of the 
Church, but this does not constitute him the man who sets 
this life in motion. That life pursues its own course, the 
stream of that life creates a bed for itself. To the theolo- 
gian, therefore, the confession of his Church does not merely 
possess the presumption of truth ; it appears objectively be- 
fore him clothed with authority : with that authority which 
the many wield over the individual, with the authority 
of the ages in the face of ephemeral excitements; with the 
authority of the office in distinction from personal life ; and 
with the authority which is due to the churchly life by 



592 §91. THE CHURCH AND THE OFFICE [Div. Ill 

virtue of the guidance of the Holy Ghost. It is not lawful, 
therefore, for him simply to slight this confessional life of 
the Church in order, while drifting on his own oars, to con- 
struct in his own way a new system of knowledge of God. 
He who undertakes to do this is bound in the end to see 
his labor stricken with unfruitfulness, or he destroys the 
churchly life, whose welfare his study ought to further. 

From this, however, it does not follow that his studies 
are to have no other tendency than to confirm the con- 
fession of his Church, as if this were clothed with infallible 
authority. This was the fault committed by Scholasticism. 
The guidance of the Holy Spirit truly intends to be immedi- 
ately effective in its final result ; but it compels itself least of 
all to be this in every part of its action. A guide is given you 
of whom you know that in the end he will bring you where 
you want to be, but he does not necessarily lead you along a 
straight line and at once to that end. You approach this end 
only by stages ; and for the sake of having your own thought 
and activity develop themselves, this guide allows you to 
take circuitous routes, and to try roads that run out, from 
which you will return of your own accord ; while amid all 
these apparently contradictory movements he keeps the end 
in view, and brings it to pass, that finally you go to it of 
yourself. And in this very connection scientific theology is 
of a practical significance to the Church. It carries, indeed, 
the end in itself, of causing the glory of God's truth to 
shine also in the world of our consciousness. But it is 
equally called to examine critically the confessional life of 
the Church, by ever and anon testing the confession of the 
Church by the principium of theology, i.e. the Word of God. 
For which reason the theologian can never be a man of 
abstract study. Of two things he must do one. As a man 
of study he must remain in harmonious contact with the 
Church, whose confession he confirms by his study. Or he 
must enter an ever dangerous suit against the Church, whose 
confession he antagonizes in one point or another, on the 
ground of the Word of God. If now this touches an infer- 
ential question, which lies in the most distant circumference 



Chap. Ill] § 92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY 593 

of dogma, the character of this struggle is less serious. But 
if the difference concerns the centrum of the confession, i.e. 
the real knowledge of God, the Church must either consent 
to his view and modify her confession, or he must break with 
the Church, whose confession he has found to be false. In 
this it is assumed, of course, that both he and his Church 
stand upon the basis of God's Word. Otherwise either the 
Church or the theologian who criticises her is wanting, so 
that there may be a good deal of quarrelling, as the outcome of 
dishonesty, but there can be no question of a spiritual strug- 
gle. But that spiritual struggle is the very thing in question. 
From both sides it must be carried on for the sake of the truth 
of God. And even as the martyr, the theologian must have 
courage to hazard his whole position in this struggle. Either 
he must be convinced, or the Church must be convinced hy 
him. If one of these two things does not take place, there 
is no escape from a final breach. Hence, even when appre- 
hended centrally, theological science owes the Church a 
bounden duty in service of the Holy Spirit. Not the duty of 
supplying her with the assurance of the faith ; this the theo- 
logian must derive from the life of the Church. And a 
theology which makes it appear that it has to furnish the 
assurance of faith, cuts away the knowledge of God from its 
moorings, and builds by the authority of reason. But, in the 
service of the Holy Spirit, theology is called ever and anon to 
test the historic, confessional life of the Church by its source, 
and to this end to examine it after the norm of the Holy Script- 
ure. By itself confessional life tends to petrify and to fall 
asleep, and it is theology that keeps the Church awake ; that 
lends its aid in times of conflict with oft-recurring heresies ; 
that rouses her self-consciousness anew to a giving of account, 
and in this way averts the danger of petrifaction. 

§ 92. The Liberty of Scientific Theology 

To be able, however, to accomplish this task, scientific 
theology must be entirely free in her movement. This, of 
course, does not imply license. Every study is bound by the 
nature of its object, and subjected to the laws that govern 



594 §92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY [Div. in 

the activity of our consciousness. But this is so far from a 
limitation of its liberty, that its very liberty consists in being 
bound to these laws. The railway train is free, so long as 
the rails hold its wheels in their embrace. But it becomes 
unfree, works itself in the ground, and cannot go on as soon 
as the wheels jump the track. Hence there is no question of 
desiring to free the theologian as such at the bar of his own 
conscience from his obligation to his subject, his principium, 
or the historic authority of the Church ; what we should object 
to is, that the study should be prevented from pursuing its 
own way. That a Church should forbid a minister of the 
Word the further use of her pulpit when he antagonizes her 
confession, or that a board of trustees should dismiss a pro- 
fessor, who, according to their view, does not serve the end 
for which he was appointed, has nothing whatever to do with 
this liberty of studies, A ship-owner, who dismisses a captain 
because he sails the ship to a different point of destination 
from what the ship-owner designated, in no wise violates 
thereby the personal rights of the captain. When a Church 
appoints a minister of the Word, she and she alone is to de- 
termine what she desires of him, and when he is no longer 
able to perform this, she can no longer retain him in her ser- 
vice. And in the same way, when the curators of a university 
appoint some one to teach Lutheran dogmatics, and this theo- 
logian meanwhile becomes Romish, it is not merely their right 
but their duty to displace him. Yea, stronger still, a theolo- 
gian who, in such a case, does not withdraw, is dishonest, and 
as such cannot be upheld. But these cases have nothing to 
do with the liberty of studies, and at no time does the churchly 
liberty of the theologian consist of anything but his right to 
appeal to the Word of God, on the ground of which he may 
enter into a spiritual conflict with his Church, and if he fails 
in this, to withdraw. Thus when the liberty of theology is 
spoken of, we do not mean theology as attached to any office, 
but theology as an independent phenomenon. The question 
simply is, whether, after it has separated itself from this office, 
and thus makes its appearance as theology only, it is or is not 
free. 



Chap. Ill] § 92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY 595 

And the answer is, that every effort to circumscribe the- 
ology by any obstacle whatever is antagonistic to her nature, 
and disables her for her calling. The law of thought will 
not allow you to call the thing black, which you see to be 
white. As a thing presents itself to you, so does it cast its 
image in your consciousness. To say that you see a thing in 
this way, but that you must represent it to yourself in the 
other way, is to violate the freedom of thought. We grant 
that a man of study is frequently blinded by superficiality, 
by want of thoroughness and sobriety, and sometimes even 
by conceit and arrogance, so that he has a false view of his 
object. Formally^ however, this does not alter the case ; 
even when his view is false, he is bound to describe a thing 
as he sees it. We are concerned here with the same problem 
as with the erring conscience. When Saul before his conver- 
sion worked havoc among the churches of God, his conscience 
erred, in so far as he deemed this to be his duty to God. If, 
however, he had remained quiescent and allowed the thing 
free course which he thought it his duty to oppose, at that 
moment he would have violated his conscience and have 
formally sinned. Whoever, therefore, may please to be a the- 
ologian, and whatever conclusions he may reach by his inves- 
tigations, and may publish as results of his study, jou. must 
quietly allow. Even when the Church or a curatorium de- 
cides that his views disqualify him for the office he may hold, 
neither his theory nor his liberty of speech or writing may be 
denied him. Of course he must be willing to risk his office 
and his position ; but what is this, compared to what was 
risked by the martyrs for their conviction ? If he is a man of 
principle, and means what he says, he w411 not hesitate to make 
this sacrifice. And how great an influence one may exert 
upon theology, even without office, has sufficiently been shown 
by Spinoza. All the theologian can ask is, liberty to investi- 
gate, speak and write agreeably to the claims of his convic- 
tion. If only he is not impeded in this, he is free. And that 
is the liberty in which he may not be hindered in the least. 

We grant that this may give rise to the case, that he who 
began as theologian will cease to be a theologian, in order 



596 § 92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

that he may speak as a philosopher. He who chooses another 
object than that of theology and consequently goes out from 
another principium, and investigates agreeably to another 
method, may still be a man of learning, but he is no longer a 
theologian. But even this must be left to the free operation 
of minds. The persistent heretic must be banished from the 
Church ; a professor, whose presence is a menace to the high- 
est interests of a school, must be dismissed; but from the 
field of theology no one can disappear, unless he leaves it of 
his own free will. He may do this consciously by the open 
declaration : I am no longer a theologian ; or, again, the results 
of his investigations may bring it about, that at length nobody 
numbers him any more among theologians. But so long as it 
pleases him to pose as a theologian, no one can prevent him ; 
even when he has undermined, as far as he was able, succes- 
sively, the object, principle and method of theology. How- 
ever just, therefore, the people's protest is, when from the 
pulpit a theologian attacks the confession of the Church which 
he serves, or when from the platform a professor antagonizes 
the standards of the school for whose principles he ought 
to make propaganda, that protest becomes unwarranted and 
may not be tolerated when it directs itself against the liberty 
of the man of science. Expression may be given to the indig- 
nation which smarts under an assault on sacred things ; but 
in his personal liberty the man of science must be respected. 
And when he shows that for the sake of his scientific convic- 
tion there is no sacrifice too great for him, so that he bravely 
defies opposition from every quarter, praise must not be with- 
held from him for such heroic strength of character. This 
praise must be withheld from the man who, for the sake of 
saving his position, sacrifices his Church or his school ; but it 
is due to those titanic spirits who show, indeed, that they do 
not contend for their position, but simply for the liberty of 
science and the liberty of their deepest conviction. 

This absolute liberty is, moreover, indispensable, if theology 
is to discharge her duty to the confessional life of the Church. 
Not that the Church should yield summarily to every criti- 
cism of her confession. The Church may not modify her 



Chap. Ill] § 92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY 597 

confession, unless the conviction takes hold of her that some 
piirt of her confession cannot stand before the bar of the 
Word of God. But on the other hand, also, her confession 
must be alive ; in its truth and clearness it must rest upon 
the Church's consciousness of life itself, and thereby be so 
firmly rooted, that it cannot stand in fear of criticism. Real 
gold will court trial ; and theology is not able to try, test 
and criticise, if she is withheld the right to do this freely 
and radically. The history of Scholasticism shows, that when 
the expression of free thought is choked, and criticism of the 
confession becomes a question of life and death, theology 
fails of her task in many respects. And on the other hand, 
the Church has nothing to fear from this liberty of studies, 
provided she but do her duty within her own pale. Of course, 
she must not permit her confession to be attacked or ignored 
in her pulpits. The Church undertakes the propaganda of 
her life and consciousness, and he who does not share her life, 
or does not think from her world of thought, cannot be he7' 
organ. She must also apply Christian discipline, in order to 
keep the purity of confession intact among her members. 
But provided she is not behind in this, the criticism of theo- 
logical science can bring her blessings only. For this pro- 
vides the constant stimulus to turn back from the confession 
to the Word of God, and so prevents the Church from living 
on the Avater in the pitcher, and allowing itself to be cut off 
from the Fountain whence that water was drawn. A sharp, 
critical development of theology will ever entail a keener 
wakefulness of historical-positive theology, to make the 
Church understand anew the treasure she holds in her creed. 
In this way also the confessional development of the Church 
will not be at a standstill, but be ever making advance. And 
if for a while negative criticism carries the greatest weight, 
it will not last long, since the theologians who stand outside 
the life of the Church are bound to lose, sooner or later, their 
interest in theological studies. 

If revelation were given in a dialectically prepared form, so 
that it consisted of a confession given by God Himself, of a 
catechism and of a law worked out in detailed particulars ; if 



598 § 92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

such a dialectically prepared form were given us in our own 
language, and if the copy of this lay before us in the original, 
infallible manuscript : the majesty of God would not invite, 
but forbid, such criticism and such a liberty of studies. But 
such was not the appointment of God. Revelation was given 
in a historic and symbolic form to be worked into a dialectic 
form by us ; it was given in a language that is foreign to us ; 
and the manuscripts which are at our disposal are very 
different from each other and not free from faults. We are 
offered no bread cut and sliced, but seed-grain, from which, 
by our labor, wheat grows, in turn to be ground into meal 
and made into bread. Hence the human factor is not doomed 
to inactivity, but stimulated to highest action, which action 
must always go through all sorts of uncertainty and commo- 
tion. By feeling only we find the way. In doing this our con- 
sciousness tries to grasp, assimilate and reproduce its object 
with the aid of both actions of which our consciousness is 
capable : viz. immediate faith and discursive thought. At 
one time the results of this twofold action coincide, and at 
another time they antagonize each other, and from this 
tumult that activity is born by which we make personal, 
ecclesiastical and scientific advances. There is here no 
papal infallibility to furnish a final decision, and least of all 
should this be taken as the continuation of infallible inspira- 
tion, since it differs entirely in form, character and tendency 
from the inspiration of the Scripture. Moreover, such a 
papal infallibility can have no other result than is actually 
seen in the Church of Rome ; viz. that faith in the rich treas- 
ure of revelation is superseded by a faith in the Church, and 
that the healthy reaction of free theology upon the confes- 
sional life of the Church is entirely excluded. Such a papal 
infallibility aims at an outward, mathematical certainty which 
is irreconcilably opposed to the whole manner of existence of 
the revelation of God. To a certain extent it may even be 
said that in an empirical sense there is nothing certain here. 
There is conflict of opinion concerning the reading of the 
manuscripts, concerning the interpretation of every book 
and pericope, concerning every abstraction and deduction, 



Chap. Ill] §92. LIBERTY OF SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY 599 

and concerning every formulation and every application of 
the thought obtained. He who desires notarial accuracy is 
disappointed at every step in this sanctuary. But when 
the outcome shows that, notwithstanding all these difficul- 
ties, thousands and tens of thousands have obtained full 
assurance and certainty, to our Protestant consciousness it 
implies the guarantee that the Holy Spirit has not merely 
given us a Book and then withdrawn Himself from our human 
scene of action, but that that same Holy Spirit continues to 
be our leader, and in that very freedom of the action of our 
spirit causes His dominion to triumph. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ORGANISM OF THEOLOGY 

§ 93. Part of an Organism 

By the organism of theology we mean what is commonly 
called " the division of the theological departments." Since, 
however, theology as an organic whole is itself an organic 
member of the all-embracing organism of science, for the sake 
of clearness, a short resume is here necessary of what was 
treated in our first chapter. Notwithstanding our position 
that science shows itself in a twofold form, viz. science as 
prosecuted in the circle outside of palingenesis, and science 
as studied in the circle ruled over by palingenesis, this an- 
tithesis is nevertheless merely empirical. According to its 
idea there is but one science, and they who do not reckon 
with palingenesis naturally refuse to see anything but the 
result of imagination and obscurantism in what is science to 
us. And we, in turn, refuse to acknowledge as science the 
science which is studied outside of palingenesis. As said 
before, both these sciences have a very broad field in common, 
which includes all those objects which are not affected by the 
differentiation of palingenesis, in so far as the investigation 
of these objects employs no other functions of our mind 
than those which have remained uninjured by the darken- 
ing brought upon us by sin. This embraces, in the first 
place, everything that is commonly called sciences by the 
English, and sciences exactes by the French ; at least so far 
as the exponents of these sciences hold themselves to their 
task, and do not make cosmological inferences or construct 
philosophical hypotheses. But in the second place, the sub- 
ordinate labor of the spiritual sciences also belongs to this, 
so far as it tends exclusively to collect and determine exter- 
nal, observable data. Hence a very large part of philological 

600 



Chap. IV] §93. PART OF AN ORGANISM 601 

study, in the narrower sense, and of historical detail goes on 
outside of the afore-mentioned differentiation. The fact that 
a person compares a few codices constitutes him by no means 
a philologist, nor because he studies a certain part of positive 
law is he made a jurist, and much less does he become a theo- 
logian because he inquires into the history of a monastery. 
But in doing this, such scholars may readily furnish contri- 
butions which are of lasting value to their several depart- 
ments. So far as the sciences exactes rest simply on counting, 
weighing and measuring, they do not stand very high ; neither 
does this subordinate detail-study of the spiritual sciences 
bear an ideal scientific character ; but they have this in their 
favor, that universal validity attaches to their results, and 
for this reason, though unjustly, they are largely credited 
as being the onli/ strictly scientific studies. But this is only 
self-deception. These studies derive their peculiar character 
simply from the fact that they do not touch the higher func- 
tions of the subject, and are affected by the subject only in 
so far as, standing outside the influence of sin, it is one and 
the same in all investigators. Science in the higher sense be- 
gins only where these higher functions operate, and then, of 
course, these two streams must separate, because the work- 
ing of these higher functions, with and without palingenesis, 
differs. From this it follows, at the same time, that universal 
validity cannot be attained except in so far as, potentially 
at least, these higher functions work identically. The stu- 
dents of science in whom these functions are unenlightened 
can advance no farther than the recognition of their results 
in their own circle. And on the other hand, the students 
of science to whom the enlightening has come can never 
promise themselves anything more than the recognition of 
their results in the circle of those who have been enlight- 
ened. From the nature of the case this is intended simply 
in the potential sense. Neither one of these sciences ex- 
pects an immediate recognition of their results and from all ; 
they simply assume that every one who reaches a logical 
and complete development within one of these two circles 
will find the results to be thus and not otherwise. Hence the 



602 §93. PART OF AN ORGANISM [Div. Ill 

position is this, that that science which arises from natural 
data only, subjective as well as objective, asserts, and is bound 
to assert itself, to be the science which originates of necessity 
from the reflection of the cosmos in the subjective conscious- 
ness of humanity. And, on the other hand, that science which 
reckons with the fact of re-creation, objective as well as sub- 
jective, asserts that real science is born only from the human 
consciousness that has been restored again to its normal self, 
and therefore cannot recognize as such the fruit of the work- 
ing of the still abnormal human consciousness. The rule 
that he who is not born again of water and spirit cannot see 
the kingdom of God, applies not merely to the domain of 
theology. Without enlightening, the jurist is not able to 
open his eyes to see the Justice of God, neither can the 
philologist observe the course of God in history and in the 
conscious life of the nations. 

But whatever view-point one occupies, science, as it de- 
velops itself in each of these two circles, is in either case 
organically one, because the object forms an organic whole, 
and the subject in the consciousness of humanity is itself 
organic, and lives organically in connection with the object. 
Of course theology falls of itself out of that science which 
has no other machinery than human data; and since by sin 
and curse, both objectively and subjectively, a disturbance has 
been created in the organism, its organic character is bound 
to exhibit defects, and frequently lead to a non liquet^ or 
even to radical agnosticism. But neither the one nor the 
other renders science, thus interpreted, either mechanical or 
atomistic. The characteristic of the organism remains rec- 
ognizable and dominant. And from the nature of the case 
this applies in a much higher sense to that science which is 
under the power of re-creation, since it includes theology 
and possesses the missing links. From this organic character 
of science follows, at the same time, its unity. From our 
standpoint we do not assert that the subject of theology is 
those who have been enlightened, and that the subject of all 
other science is those of the natural mind (i/ru;^t/co?), but we 
claim that the only subject of all science is the consciousness 



Chap. IV] § 94. THEOLOGY AN INDEPENDENT ORGAN 603 

of regenerated or re-created humanity ; and that so large a 
part of scientific study can be furnished equally well by 
those who stand outside of this, is simply because this build- 
ing also admits a vast amount of hod-carrier service which is 
entirely different from the higher architecture. 

§ 94:. In the Organism of Science Theology is an Indepen- 
dent Organ 

When Schleiermacher described theology as an agglomerate 
of a few departments of knowledge, which found their unity 
in the " guidance and direction of the Church," he actually ab- 
rogated theology and her organic existence in the organism of 
the sciences. An agglomerate is never organic, it is the oppo- 
site of organic, and is never made organic by any unity in the 
purpose of your studies. The organic character of a science 
carries also in itself a teleological element, but the end alone 
can never make an organism of that which differs in object 
and principle. The later effort, therefore, was entirely ra- 
tional, to regain the unity of object by making religion the 
object of investigation. We do not deny that the science of 
religion finds an equally organic place in the organism of 
science, as for instance the science of the aesthetic, moral, or 
intellectual life of man. It is our conviction that this science 
got into the wrong track, when by the aid of religious evolu- 
tion it repealed the antithesis between true arnd false religion. 
But even so, this science is formally an organic part of the 
organism of science. We simply deny that in this organism 
the science of religion can ever constitute an independent 
organ. By leading motives the organism of science is divided 
into a few great complexes, which form as it were special 
provinces in the republic of the sciences. Each of these com- 
plexes divides itself into smaller complexes, and these smaller 
complexes subdivide into smaller groups; but for this very 
reason the distinction between the coordinate and the sub- 
ordinate must not be lost from sight. In our body the 
nervous system forms a complex of its own; hence every-- 
thing that is radically governed by the nerves must be; 
subsumed by science under this head. The Veluwe along 



604 § 94. THEOLOGY AN INDEPENDENT ORGAN [Div. Ill 

the Zuyder Zee is indeed a particular region of land, but 
it should not for this reason be coordinated with the Dutch 
provinces. Nothing arbitrary therefore can be tolerated 
in the distribution of the organism of science. There must 
be a principium of division, and only those parts of the or- 
ganism are independent which by virtue of this principium 
are governed immediately by this general, and not by a lower, 
principium of division. Pathology cannot be an independent 
science, because it is not formed immediately by the prin- 
cipium of division of science, but is governed by the general 
conception of the medical science. And this is the case here. 
As a psychological-historical phenomenon, religion is but one 
of many psychological phenomena. It is granted that it is 
the most important, but it is always one of many. It is no 
genus, but a species under a genus. Hence the science of 
religion can never claim for itself an independent place. It 
belongs to the philological faculty, and in this faculty it 
occurs as a subordinated science, partly under psychology, 
partly under ethnology, and partly under philosophy. 

But it becomes a different matter when, passing by the 
" Science of Religion," we speak of Theology in the sense 
indicated above. Then we deal with a science which has a 
single common object (objectum univocum), arises from a sin- 
gle common principle (principium univocum), and develops 
itself after a method of its own. This cannot be subordi- 
nated, either under the natural, juridical, philological, or 
medical sciences, hence it must be coordinated. In scientific 
research human consciousness pursues the five principally 
differentiated parts of its total object. It directs itself to 
man^ to nature about man, and to God as man's creator, pre- 
server, and end ; while with man, as far as he himself is 
concerned, logical distinction must be made between his 
fsychic^ somatic and his social existence. These are the 
five primordial lines which spring immediately from the 
principium of division, i.e. from the human consciousness 
in relation to its total object ; and this agrees entirely with 
the division of the faculties, which is the outcome of the 
increated law of life itself and of its practical needs. And 



Chap. IV] § 95. BOUNDARY OF THEOLOGY IN SCIENCE 605 

since theology directs itself to the " knowledge of God," 
it cannot be subordinated, but must be coordinated, and 
because of its independent object^ its independent princip- 
ium, and its independent method, it claims our homage as 
an independent organ in the organism of science. 

§ 95. The Boundary/ of Theology in the Organism of Science 

Theology is not isolated in the organism of science. It is 
united with it in an organic way. From this it follows that 
communication between it and the other four great scientific 
complexes is not prevented from any one side. Communi- 
cation, avenues of approach, and points of union extend to 
all sides. This, however, does not imply that there are no 
boundaries between theology and the other four coordinates ; 
but as in every other non-mechanical domain, these boun- 
daries here must be measured from the centrum, and not in 
the periphery. When a centre and the length of a ray are 
given, the boundary is fixed for the entire surrounding, even 
though this is not entirely marked out and thus is not dis- 
cernible outwardly. 

This centre here is the revealed ectypal self-knowledge of 
God. Since, however, it is the revealed and ectypal self- 
knowledge of God, it is not limited to abstract knowledge of 
God, taken as an isolated object of thought. The fact that it 
is ectypal expresses, indeed, -a relation of this self-knowledge 
to man, and that it is revealed assumes logically a dealing 
with the data, condition and means in which and by which 
this revelation takes place. The knowledge which God has 
of Himself includes also the knowledge of His counsel, work 
and will, and the relation in which He has placed man to 
Himself, outside of as well as under sin. Since this ectypal 
knowledge of God is revealed, not in the abstract sense to 
satisf}^ our desire for knowledge, but very concretely, as one 
of the means by which this all-excelling work of re-creation 
is accomplished, a process is effected by this ectypal knowl- 
edge of God, namely the Christian Church, by which, even 
as a tree by its fruit, this knowledge of God is more par- 
ticularly known. And so far as in this way the light of 



606 §95. THE BOUNDAKY OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

this ectypal knowledge of God shines out, and its working is 
observable, the boundaries of theology extend, or what was 
called its " compass," including, of course, what we must do 
in order, in our time also, to let the working of the knowledge 
of God have free course. As soon, however, as the influence 
which has been exerted by this knowledge of God outside 
the sphere created by itself is considered, theology provides 
contributions (Lehnsatze) for other sciences, but operates it- 
self no longer. Then it concerns the application of its results 
to other objects, and no longer the product of what is to be 
applied. As the theologian applies results furnished by logic, 
but is thereby no creator of logic himself, so the jurist, philol- 
ogist, medicus and naturalist must deal with the results of 
theology without themselves being thereby theologians. 

So far, on the other hand, as the jurist, the medicus, etc., 
finds data in revelation which bear not on the way of the 
knowledge of God, but immediately on his department, he 
must determine for himself what influence one and another 
shall exert upon his own investigation. Now we speak of 
course of the jurist, the philologist, etc., as he should be, 
i.e. as standing within the pale of palingenesis, and as a 
Christian bending his knee before the majesty of the Lord 
and of His Revelation ; not being limited by Revelation, but 
enriched and enlarged by it, seeing what otherwise he would 
not see, knowing what otherwise would be hidden from 
him. We do not advocate, therefore, a certain subserviency 
of the other sciences to theology as the queen of sciences. 
There can never be a question of such a relation of mis- 
tress and servant, in a scientific sense, among the sciences. 
He who investigates may render no obedience to any but 
the irresistible impulse of his own conviction. Even where 
material (Lehnsatze) is borrowed by other sciences from 
theology, it occurs by no other authority than that by 
which theology in turn borrows material from other sci- 
ences, i.e. under the conviction that by similar investiga- 
tions one would reach like results. The conflicts which arise 
from this are therefore no conflicts between theology and 
the other sciences, but conflicts which the jurist, the physi- 



Chap. IY] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE 607 

cist, meclicus, and philologist faces, each in his own domain, 
in the same way in which the theologian faces these in his. 
All these conflicts arise from the fact that re-creation has be- 
gun, indeed, potentially, but can be completed with the parou- 
sia alone. If re-creation were completed now, every conflict 
of this nature would be inconceivable. Since now it is not 
finished, either in ourselves or in the cosmos, of necessity 
we have to deal with natural and supernatural data. Both 
these reflect themselves in our consciousness, and this gives 
rise to the conflict in our consciousness; which conflict is 
ended only in so far as we succeed in tracing the real con- 
nection between these two series of data. And this is by no 
means accomplished by ignoring any data that present them- 
selves to us, from both series, or from either of the two. 
This might give us an ostrich wisdom but no human science. 
In no particular should the naturalist, for instance, be im- 
peded. With the aid of all possible means at his command, 
he must prosecute his observations, and formulate what he 
has observed. If, on the other hand, he undertakes to con- 
struct a system from his discoveries, or commits himself 
to hypotheses by which to interpret his observations, the 
leaving out of account of the factor of Revelation is equiva- 
lent to the work of one who, in the biography of his hero, 
ignores his correspondence or autobiography. Whatever ap- 
plies, therefore, to the origin and end of things cannot be 
determined by the laws he has discovered, since every law, 
when carried logically to its extreme in this matter of origin 
and end, leads ad absurdum^ and involves us in antinomies 
that cannot be solved. If a law is to apply to a kingdom, 
it is assumed that this kingdom has being. Neither is he 
able, with his discovered law, to react against the possibility 
of re-creation. Since he knows, while he himself is affected 
by palingenesis, that (in order to realize the re-creation) a 
higher law in God is bound to modify the operation of the 
law which dominates the natural life. If he does not ac- 
knowledge this, he denies in principle the very possibility 
of re-creation, is without the photismos, and is unable to draw 
any conclusion. If, on the other hand, standing himself at 



608 § 95. THE BOUNDARY OF THEOLOGY [Diy. Ill 

tlie view-point of palingenesis, he prosecutes his studies, 
nothing binds him but his own conviction, and he must 
try to overcome, if possible, the conflicts that are sure to 
present themselves. In this, however, he will not always 
succeed, because the want of the necessary data renders this 
impossible. And neither can the claim be made that the solu- 
tion found by him shall be at once accepted by every one 
else. Even in the scientific circles of Law, History and Phi- 
losoph}^ which do not reckon with palingenesis, differences 
of tendency and insight prevail, from which definite schools 
form themselves, which arise only presently to go down 
again. All this is but owing to the limitation of our power 
to know, to the paucity of data at our command, and to the 
usual impossibility of verification. The slow progress made 
in this direction is chiefly to be attributed to the fact that 
theologians have studied the above-mentioned conflicts almost 
exclusively, and that the Christians who have devoted them- 
selves to these studies have for the most part been dualisti- 
cally constituted, being heathen with the head and Christian 
at heart. And real advances will be made only when men 
who are themselves heart and soul alive to the efficacy of 
regeneration, at the same time devote all their powers of 
thought to these natural and historical studies, and so face 
these very conflicts. 

The theologian also is familiar with these conflicts in 
his domain, occasioned by the incongruity which so often 
appears between natural and revealed theology. The theo- 
logian also is concerned with re-creation, and in the very 
idea of re-creation lies the antithesis between that which is 
to undergo the re-creative act and that which is established 
as outcome of that act. Hence there is always a duality : 
(1) the old data, which are present in what shall be regen- 
erated, and (2) the new data, which shall constitute the 
regeneration. The Scripture, therefore, does not hesitate 
to speak of the " old man " and of the " new man " (Col. 
iii. 10), by which to indicate what present data must be 
removed (JnreKhva-aa-OaC)^ and what data, brought in from 
without, must appear (evhvaacrOaL). By that which must 



Chap. IV] IN THE ORGANISxM OF SCIENCE 609 

be removed, we are by no means to understand the structure 
of our human personality ; this, indeed, must remain, since 
otherwise there would be a new creation and no reofenera- 
tion. What is meant is simply that which in that structure 
has been deformed by sin and has become a sinful habit. Con- 
sequently, revealed theology distinguishes in man between 
what is his human structure, in order that it may attach it- 
self to this, and all sinful deformity, in order to exclude it. 
And since natural theology does not belong to what consti- 
tutes the " old man," but on the contrary to the psychical 
structure of our human essence, revealed theology does by no 
means exclude this natural theology, but rather postulates it, 
assumes it, and joins itself to it. For this reason it was so 
absurd in the last century to place this natural theology as a 
second principium of Divine knowledge by the side of the 
Holy Scripture, and so really to furnish two theologies : first, 
a brief and vague knowledge of God from natural theology, 
and after that a broad and sharply outlined knowledge of God 
from Revelation. For sinful man, as he is able in his psychical 
structure from himself, in connection with his observation of 
the cosmos, to obtain this natural theology (Rom. i. 19, 20), is 
the person in all dogma toward whom Revelation directs it- 
self, to whom it is disposed, and whom it takes thus and not 
otherwise. Hence our older theologians were much nearer 
the truth when they applied the clear distinctions between 
man in his original creation, fallen, and restored, to almost 
QYQTy dogma, provided it is carefully kept in view that they 
did not delineate fallen man to whom the revelation was 
made after life, but took their copy from the image offered 
of him by the Scripture. Neither did they do this in order 
to lose themselves in abstraction, which has nothing in com- 
mon with life, but to obtain certainty that they did not 
fall into error in their view of fallen man. If they had 
gone to work empirically, and had sought from life itself to 
estimate what sort of a person fallen man might be, all cer- 
tainty of starting-point would have been wanting ; which is 
seen sufficiently clearly from the several sorts of theories 
that have been framed concerning it. On the contrary, they 



610 § 95. THE BOUNDARY OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

allowed the Word of God itself to furnish them this image, 
and now they knew that they had solid ground under their 
feet. Sinful man was devoid of an adequate self-knowledge, 
and by the light of the Word of God alone does he recognize 
his true appearance. Not as if henceforth he was to take no 
further account of his essential existence, but because in this 
way only did he come to know what his essential existence is. 
Natural Theology, therefore, is not added to the Scripture as 
a second something, but is taken up in the Scripture itself, 
and by the light of the Scripture alone appears in connection 
with the reality of our life. Hence natural theology cannot 
be explained in dogmatics, except under the category of man 
in his original righteousness and man in his fall. Every 
other mode of treatment leads either to rationalism, by pla- 
cing reason alongside of the Scripture as a second principium, 
or to mysticism, by assigning the same place to the life of the 
emotions, in order presently, by logical sequence, to push the 
Scriptural principium to one side and to destroy it. But if this 
ends the conflict for the theologian, both formally and with re- 
spect to principle, the fact is not taken away that the antithe- 
sis is bound to reappear between fallen man, who is to be re- 
created, and restored man, who is to be looked upon as the fruit 
of this re-creation. This would not be so if this re-creation 
were completed in one moment. But it is unavoidable, since 
it requires sometimes a very long process by whi^h to bring 
out potential re-creation to actual completion. Hence in the 
doctrines of the Covenant, of Baptism, of the Church, of 
Sanctification and in Ethics this conflict reappears again and 
again, and to this day theology struggles to overcome the 
conflict, theoretically in her formulation of the things to be 
believed (credenda), and practically in her teaching of the 
things to be done (agenda). 

This conflict, therefore, exists not merely between theol- 
ogy and natural science, etc., but extends across the entire 
domain of human knowledge and presents itself to the Chris- 
tian thinker in every department. The reason is plain. Since 
sin denaturalized the entire cosmic life in and about man, 
re-creation comes in to restore the entire cosmos, as far as it 



Chap. IV] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE 611 

stands related to man. It is one of the demands of truth, 
therefore, that both factors of this conflict shall be exhibited 
as they are. By placing a board covered with flowers across 
an abyss, the abyss is not filled in. There is no need, how- 
ever, that the conflict shall be overestimated. If, for instance, 
the naturalist observes that the deposit of the Nile increases 
annually so many millimetres, and that it is so many metres 
high, his conclusion is indisputable, that, if this deposit has 
been constant, the height of 12.47 metres now reached would 
have required a much longer period of time than is known 
to our era. But he is not able to prove that the deposit has 
been constant. The required observation lies outside the 
empiric domain to which he must limit his judgment. This 
is not cited for the sake of proving the fact that our earth has 
not existed longer than six thousand years. With reference 
to this fact Scriptural teaching is by no means exegetically 
sure. But for the sake of showing in a concrete instance 
what we understand by an unlawful extension of the conflict. 
Meanwhile, the relation between Theology and Philosophy 
deserves separate mention, since the boundary which sepa- 
rates these two sciences is frequently crossed from both sides. 
This requires a closer analysis of the idea of philosophy. 
Philosophy embraces two things : on the one hand, the inves- 
tigation into man^s psycMcal existence^ and, on the other hand, 
the effort to put together concentrically the entire content 
of the scientific consciousness in organic connection, and to 
explain it. Man's psychic existence leads, in turn, to a 
separate investigation (1) into his psyche Q^v^v} as such 
(psychology), and (2) into the ethical, sesthetical and logical 
qualities of this psyche (ethics, aesthetics and logic). And 
finally. Logic, in a broader sense, includes the investigation 
into the consciousness as such, into the laws which govern 
our thought, and into the ways which lead to knowledge 
(^PrincipienleJire^ Logica und Erkenntnisstheorie^. The sec- 
ond task of Philosophy is of an entirely different kind ; it is 
not directed to the conscious and thinking man, but it is the 
effort of the thinking man himself to reflect the cosmos, 
which presents itself to him as existing organically, as an 



612 §95. THE BOUNDARY OF THEOLOGY [Div. Ill 

organic whole in the mirror of his consciousness. Actually, 
therefore, two sciences are embraced in Philosophy which 
evermore separate. Efforts have even been made to give an 
independent position to the study of thinking man, under the 
name of " Logic" (taken in a broader sense than now). This 
plan will probably produce the farther effect of having Psy- 
chology appear on a ground of its own, with its quality-doc- 
trine in ethics and aesthetics. This will make Logic consist of 
the science of thinking man, or, if you please, it will make the 
Logos in man to be the object of investigation, and Philoso- 
phy, in the narrower sense, will be the science which collects 
the results of all the other sciences concentrically under a 
higher unity. Thus we may have Logic as the science of 
thinking (cogitare), and Philosophy as the science of being 
(esse). Meanwhile, no objection can be raised against class- 
ing, as yet, this entire complex of sciences under the common 
name of the philosophical sciences, provided in the discussion 
of the relations between theology and these sciences, the indi- 
cated distinction is kept in view, and we no longer speak of 
the philosophy. As for Logic, the saying that it is an aux- 
iliary to the theologian reduces it by no means to the rank of a 
handmaid of theology. It renders this service equally to all 
the other sciences. As far as Logic is concerned, this entire 
representation of the handmaid (ancilla) was simply a matter 
of custom. It is, indeed, a patent fact, that in every science 
man is the thinking agent, and if he shall undertake intel- 
lectual pursuits in an accurate and prepared way, and in the 
full consciousness of self, the knowledge and practice of the 
faculty of thought are indispensable to him. A theologian 
who undervalues Logic, as being little necessary to him, 
simply disarms himself. This was by no means the practice 
of our older theologians. They always emphasized most 
strongly the study of formal logic, together with its related 
arts (re^i^at). By saying this, we do not imply that in this 
field, also, no conflicts may present themselves. These are 
excluded so long as one confines himself to logic in the 
narrower sense, but are bound to come up as soon as "die 
Principien der Erkenntniss," together with the method by 



Chap. IV] IN THE ORGANISM OF SCIENCE 613 

which to attain to knowledge, or included under Logic. This 
appears all too painfully, indeed, from the serious effort of 
naturalism to apply its method to the spiritual sciences. No 
doubt, this conflict is least of all a conflict between theol- 
ogy and philosophy, but one born from the differing dispo- 
sitions of the thinker. If his ideal life is high, he cannot 
reach the same conclusions as another person, whose mind 
and tendency confine themselves entirely to the things seen 
(ppara). In the same way, if by regeneration thinking man 
stands in vital comrbunion with the kingdom of God, he must 
see differently, and consequently judge differently, from the 
one who stands outside of it. The same applies to psychology 
and ethics. A Christian philosopher knows his own soul 
(.i^^XV^ and views the ethical life differently from the phi- 
losopher who stands outside of regeneration. The antithesis, 
therefore, does not consist in the fact that theology offers a 
Christian ethics and philosophy a neutral one. The Christian 
philosopher cannot do otherwise than live Christian ethics, 
and what theology gives is not a Christian, but a theological 
ethics^ which will be more fully explained in the discussion of 
the separate departments. 

The real conflict, however, between theology and philoso- 
phy begins, when philosophy is taken in the narrower sense, 
as the science that investigates the principles of heing^ and 
in virtue of these principles seeks to furnish, from all the 
results of the other sciences, a concentric-organic life- and 
world- view. Then we should be on our guard, lest theology 
degenerate into philosophy, and philosophy capture for itself 
the place of theology. This has already happened; which 
fact explains itself from the circumstance, that philosophers 
for the most part have not reckoned with regeneration, and 
that theologians frequently have deemed themselves able to 
get along without philosophy. From the first it followed, 
that besides a psychology, an ethics, an aesthetics and a logic, 
philosophers also tried to furnish a doctrine of Grod, and from 
the imperfectly interpreted data of the inborn and the ac- 
quired knowledge of God, sought to construct a theology, 
independently of the revealed knowledge of God. Thus they 



614 § 95. BOUNDARY OF THEOLOGY IN SCIENCE [Div. Ill 

set themselves in hostile array against theology, and in self- 
defence were bent to oppose real theology, suppress it, and in 
the end banish it from the arena. On the other hand, this 
made theologians tend to view philosophy in the narrower 
sense as a hostile phenomenon, and, since they had no real 
Christian philosophy of their own, to make war against all 
philosophy. Since, however, it is impossible to live even in 
the Christian world without certain cosmological conceptions, 
they attempted to supply this want in their dogmatics, and 
thus it happened that they furnished not a simple theology 
but a theology with a philosophical seasoning. To bring this 
perverted relation to an end, it is necessary, on the one hand, 
to recognize that philosophy has an entirely different task 
to accomplish than theology, and, on the other hand, to dis- 
tinguish sharply between Christian and non-Christian phi- 
losophy. 

Philosophy has an entirely different task. Theology has 
no other calling than to take up the ectypal knowledge of 
God, as it is known from its source the Holy Scripture, into 
the consciousness of re-created humanity and to reproduce 
it. Philosophy (now always taken in the narrower sense), on 
the other hand, is called to construct the human knowledge, 
which has been brought to light by all the other sciences, into 
one architectonic whole, and to show how this building arises 
from one basis. From this it follows, that the need of philos- 
ophy is a necessity (am^/c?;) which arises out of the impulse 
of the human consciousness for unity, and is therefore of equal 
importance to those who stand outside, as to those who are in 
the regeneration. To say that a Christian is less in need of 
philosophy is only the exhibition of spiritual sloth and lack 
of understanding. The more the enlightening restores har- 
mony in our consciousness, the stronger must be the awak- 
ening of the impulse after an unitous (einheitlich) organic 
knowledge. While, on the other hand, the richer the data at 
our service, the better the hope of success in this. Philoso- 
phy which reckons only with natural data will always vibrate 
between a pantheistic, deistic and materialistic interpretation, 
and will never do more than form schools, while Christian 



Chap. IV] § 96. SELF-DETERMINATION OF THEOLOGY 615 

pliilosophy, whose theistic point of departure is fixed, is able 
to lead to unity of interpretation within the circle of regen- 
eration. But for this very reason theology will be able to go 
hand in hand with a Christian philosophy. It is the task 
of philosophy to arrange concentrically the results of all the 
other sciences, and if non-Christian philosophy ignores the 
results of theology, as though it were no science, theology 
is in duty bound to enter her protest against this. If, on 
the other hand, the philosopher himself is regenerate, and 
is historically and ecclesiastically in union with the life of 
palingenesis, then of course in his studies he includes the 
results of theology, together with the results of all the 
other sciences ; and it is his care, architectonically to raise 
such a cosmological building that of themselves the results 
of theology also find their place in it. 

§ 96. Self-determination of the Organism of Theology 

Theological Encyclopedia includes generally the question 
of the relation of theology to the University. As the matter 
actually stands in Europe, however, this question concerns 
the relation of theology to the Government. If the universi- 
ties were free corporations^ as formerly they were intended 
to be, and as they are sometimes now (in Belgium, in the 
Netherlands, America, England and in Switzerland), and as 
they ought to be everywhere, this question would entirely 
fall away ; for then this relation would merely be an item 
of history. But this question is important because to this 
day in most countries the most influential universities are 
state institutions^ founded, supported and governed by state 
authorities. Thus the Government determines not merely 
the number, rank and quality of the faculties; but directs 
also the organism of theology, as being on a par with the 
other sciences, by its conditions for every chair, and by its 
choice of departments, which it unites as a group under one 
and the same chair. Even in former times this was not 
right, since it can never be derived from the attributes of 
the Government, that it shall determine the organism of 
theology. But this raised no preponderating difficulty, inas- 



616 § 96. SELF-DETERMINATION OF THEOLOGY [Div, III 

much as in those times the Government made free-will abdica- 
tion of every discretionary right, and simply followed custom. 
Such, however, is not the case now. In Holland indeed it 
has reached such a point that the Law for Higher Education 
(of April 28, 1876, Stbl. n. 102), Art. 42, prescribes a tenfold 
division of the theological departments, which is entirely an- 
tagonistic to the nature and character of theology ; even to 
such an extent that dogmatics, which is the heart of all the- 
ology, is simply cut out from the body of theology. ^ It can 
scarcely be denied that this is a violent attack upon the 
organism of theology. In view of facts such as these, we 
maintain the right of theology to determine its own organ- 
ism. No Government can do this, since this is not its prov- 
ince; neither does it possess the data for it. Neither is it 
authorized to do this, since playing the r61e of dilettante 
and abusing its power it creates confusion in theology. It 
is evident that the division of departments and of chairs of 
itself exerts an influence upon the entire course of studies, 
upon the association of studies even in the case of the ablest 
theologians, and darkens insight into the true essence of The- 
ology. Such an interference on the part of the Government 
is an attack upon the liberty of science, while in Theology, 
moreover, it amounts to the choice of a confessional party ; 
in easu of the modern interpretation of Theology as "the 
science of religion " instead of " the science of the revealed 
knowledge of God," which it has always been, in keeping 
with its origin and principle. 

A measure of influence can more properly be accorded 
to the Church, in so far as the Church may dictate what 
studies are indispensable to the expression of her life, both 
with reference to the education of her ministers and to the 
defence of her faith ; in fact, this influence is exerted by the 
Church in the conditions assigned by her for ecclesiastical 
examinations. No university can permanently neglect in its 

1 These departments are : (a) encyclopedia, (b) history of the doctrine 
of God, (c) history of religions, (d) history of Israel's religion, (e) history 
of Christendom, (/) Israelitish and old Christian literature, (g) Old and 
New Testament exegesis, (h) history of Christian dogma, (i) philosophy 
of religion, (k) ethics. 



CiiAr. IV] § 07. ARTICULATION OE PKOrJEDEUTICS 617 

theological faculty the departments needed for these exami- 
nations. But so far as Theology stands in vital connection 
with the Church this tie is a natural one ; beyond this it 
ceases to exist. Hence even ecclesiastical influence should 
extend no further. The Church states her need, but the 
question in what way, in what order, and in what connec- 
tion this need must be met is encyclopedic and jjedagogic. 
That which exists mechanically can be taken apart and recon- 
structed differently at will, but this is not possible with organic 
life. That which lives organically obeys, in its organic devel- 
opment, an inner law of life. It is as it is because it sprang 
from its germ thus and not otherwise, and because it can 
assume no proportions except those which it possesses by 
nature. By violently attacking the life of an organism, you 
can occasion anaesthesia or hypersesthesia, atrophy or hyper- 
trophy, of one of the organs, but this does not modify the 
nature of the organism. That remains the same as before. 
Concerning the organism of theology, therefore, we cannot 
but think that all interference on the part of the Government 
should be most firmly resisted ; that the Church both may and 
must exert an influence by the appointment of those studies 
which she deems necessary for the maintenance of her life, 
provided she does not presume to determine in what way her 
requirement shall be met; and that therefore the construc- 
tion of the body of theology can be determined by itself alone 
as it unfolds its organic existence. This does not deny that 
this organic articulation (Gliederung) is formulated by our 
thinking. But if this task is properly performed, it consists 
of the simple statement of what kind of organic life we have 
discovered in the organism of theology. 

§ 97. Organic Articulation of Propcedeutics 

The discussion of propaedeutics, as such, is really in place 
in a ratio studiorum^ and not in Encyclopedia proper. And 
yet Encyclopedia cannot afford to pass the propaedeutic stud- 
ies by in silence. For these studies are not accidental, neither 
are they chosen arbitrarily, but are indicated of themselves 
in the organic ties that bind theology to the other parts of the 



618 §97. ORGANIC ARTICULATION [Div. Ill 

organism of science. Being itself a department of ideal 
science, theology naturally demands such a general devel- 
opment as is indispensable to all ideal sciences. In the 
conflict waged as to the precedence of humanistic and natu- 
ralistic studies in preparatory schools, the humanistic must 
be preferred for theological propsedeutics. But it is a mistake 
to make it appear that the humanistic training, indicated as 
such historically, is sufficient for the theologian. In the main, 
if not exclusively, humanistic propsedeutics directed them- 
selves to the beautiful form, and were but little impressed 
with the importance of philosophy and history. Ancient 
philosophy was taught, and Greek and Roman history, to- 
gether with their proper antiquities, but rather as a means 
for the understanding of the classics than as a proper factor 
for the forming of the mind. And this is not tolerated by 
the position of theology in the organism of science. To be 
sure, theology does not allow neglect of beauty of form. 
The finer form alone lends to the mind that sensitive discern- 
ment which is indispensable to all ideal science, and which 
in its reproduction is not to be discarded. But with this 
formal scholarship theology is not satisfied. The too exces- 
sive admiration of the world of old Hellas is rather an im- 
pediment in the way to the deeper study of her principles. 
To her the old classic world is simply a link in that great 
process of development that extends to the present time. 
Hence she demands a propaedeutic which embraces the entire 
course of philosophy and history down to our times, and 
which from first to last is subject to the criticism of Chris- 
tian principles. For which reason this propaedeutic cannot 
be ended in the preparatory school, but must reach its com- 
pletion in academic propaedeutics. Even in itself the limi- 
tation of propaedeutics to the gymnasia cannot be approved, 
since for every truly scientific study a scientific introduction 
into the scientific treatment of it is indispensable ; and this 
the gymnasium can never give. Theology, moreover, must 
be able to make use of a critical knowledge of human thought 
and act (philosophy and history) as its background, such as 
cannot be taught in the preparatory school. This implies at 



Chap. IV] OF PROPEDEUTICS 619 

the same time that propaedeutics cannot stand on any other 
foundation than the study of theology itself. Propsedeutica 
in the pagan sense, standing outside of palingenesis, denies 
the organic connection between theology and other studies, 
and does not prepare for, but leads one away from, theology. 
Hence the character of preparatory as well as of academic 
propaedeutics ought to be distinctively Christian; which de- 
mand is not met by the addition of religious instruction (a 
Religionsstunde) to pagan propaedeutics. It demands that 
the entire preparation itself, both formal and material, shall 
keep close reckoning with the principles of a Christian life- 
and world- view. He who is himself a partaker of palingene- 
sis, and who consequently pays homage to the Cross of 
Golgotha as the centre of the development of human his- 
tory, has an entirely different outlook upon the propaedeutic 
departments from him who as a humanist boasts of a credat 
ludaeus Appella. And the demand for a proper propaedeu- 
tics of theology is only met when the organic relation between 
the propaedeutical studies and the study of theology in the 
narrower sense is given full scope to assert itself. Indeed, if 
closely considered, the name of propaedeutics is not very hap- 
pily chosen. The theologian does not pass on to theological 
studies, in order henceforth to ignore all other sciences, but, 
proportionately to the rate of his progress, he finds himself con- 
stantly bound to trace the organic connection between his 
own and still other studies. Such as, for instance, in the 
historic and ethnologic studies of the religious differences 
of non-Christian nations. His own studies are not isolated at 
a single point, and it only weakens the position of theology 
to prosecute her studies as though she stood alone. More- 
over, later study must be continued with a definite end in 
view, in those departments which at first seemed as pro- 
paedeutics only. Every student of Church History is aware 
of this with reference to the knowledge of history ; the same 
applies to Philosophy, even Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, 
and Esthetics. 

Of course this applies to the scientific theologian only, and 
not to every Minister of the Word. Other demands apply 



620 § 97. ORGANIC ARTICULATION [Div. Ill 

to his education, which are made not by the position of 
theology in the organism of the sciences, but by the con- 
ditions with which his office brings him in touch, and which 
therefore cannot be mentioned here. Only think of what 
is advocated from many sides about the knowledge of medi- 
cine, of agriculture, of common law, of social conditions, of 
the school question, etc., as being of service to the local 
pastor. Questions with which, from the nature of the case, 
Encyclopedia cannot be concerned, since they have nothing 
to do with the nature of theology and its organic relations. 
But the more formal propaedeutics deserve, certainly, a brief 
mention, especially the study of the languages, a matter which 
is not ended with the study of the two fundamental lan- 
guages of the Scripture, the Hebrew and the Greek. For then 
even Latin might safely be omitted. It should rather be 
insisted upon that the languages be first studied from the 
general linguistic point of view, and then the question is in 
order, what are the special languages the knowledge of which 
is indispensable to the study of theology. Without a clear, 
general linguistic conception of language, one cannot truly 
enter into the knowledge of any one language. The phe- 
nomenon of language as such is organically connected with 
theology in its principium, and therefore all sound theology 
presupposes an historic and critical insight into linguistics, 
graphistics and the philosophy of grammar. Not, of course, 
as though we should begin with this. It is indeed the claim 
of pedagogics to supply the copia doctrinae during those years 
in which the memory is most plastic ; but in this review, 
which does not consider the course of studies, but the or- 
ganic position of theology in the organism of science, the 
knowledge of language in general comes first. With respect 
to individual languages in particular, the mother-tongue fol- 
lows organically first upon linguistics, because in this alone 
our immediate consciousness feels the pulse-beat of the life of 
language ; and the other modern languages have little con- 
nection with theology, except in so far as they give us access 
to the products of theologic toil in other lands. Strictly 
taken, translation might do away with this necessity ; since, 



Chap. IV] OF PROPEDEUTICS 621 

however, the indiscriminate translation of all detail-study is 
impossible, theological study is simply inconceivable without 
the knowledge of modern languages. 

The question arises next, whether Latin must be main- 
tained under this title only in theologic propaedeutics. There 
is certainly no difference of opinion about the necessity to 
the theologian of the knowledge of Latin. For more than 
twelve centuries the Christian Church documented her life 
of thought in almost no language but the Latin. He who 
is no ready reader of Latin finds himself cut off from the 
historical life of the Church. It is a different matter, how- 
ever, whether theology as such is interested in the study 
of Latin as a means to general training; something which 
is continually being contested, but which, it appears to us, 
cannot be abandoned. For this we state two reasons. First, 
because Latin as a language is classic in its clearness, con- 
ciseness and beauty, by which it puts a stamp upon our 
thinking, such as no other language can do, not even Greek 
excepted, however much richer it may be. In "common 
grace " the Latin language occupies a place of its own, 
and he who neglects her claim impoverishes the forming 
of the mind. And in the second place, the development 
of Western thought has acquired a characteristic of its own, 
first under the influence of ecclesiastical, and after that of 
humanistic Latin, which is plainly apparent in the forma- 
tion of many words and in syntax. Entirely apart from the 
question whether this characteristic should be preserved or 
abandoned, it follows from this, that a real grasp upon the 
world of our Western thought is simply impossible without 
the knowledge of Latin. Upon this ground we desire to see 
the study of Latin upheld, while we urge, at the same time, 
that this study shall not be limited to classical Latin. Latin 
is also the language of the Western Fathers, the Scholastics, 
Reformers, and later theologians; but their Latin bears 
another character, uses other words, follows a different con- 
struction, and speaks in new terms. He who understands 
Cicero cannot for that reason understand Augustine. Virgil's 
Aeneid is no help to understand Thomas's Summa. Horace 



622 §97. ORGANIC ARTICULATION [Dit. Ill 

is of little help in the reading of Calvin or Voetius. Hence 
the organic connection demands that the study of Latin shall 
not limit itself to the golden age of the classics, but that it 
shall follow the historical process in the language which, 
though nationally dead, is still alive in use. The importance 
of this does not appear to those to whom theology is a mere 
Science of Religion; but he who would study theology in 
the real sense of the word, and thus continue the task 
begun by our older theologians, must begin by understand- 
ing them. 

A like observation applies in part to Greek, which is 
organically related to theology in three ways : First, as the 
language of old Hellas ; secondly, as the language of the 
LXX, of Flavins Josephus, etc., and 'New Testament; and 
thirdly, as the language of the Eastern Fathers, taken 
in their widest sense. As a starting-point, therefore, the 
knowledge of classic Greek is a necessity; then comes the 
knowledge of later Greek (^kolvyj)^ and more especially of 
the Syrian and Alexandrian, which come nearest to the lan- 
guage of the New Testament. Then follows the language 
of the New Testament itself, and finally that peculiar 
development attained by Greek in the Byzantine Chris- 
tian world. They who pass on from Demosthenes to the 
New Testament, as is the case with many in our times, with- 
out ever having a glimpse of one of the Eastern Fathers in 
the original, fall short in historic knowledge of Greek. Since 
the gymnasium is intended for young men of other faculties 
as well, and is, therefore, not able to give a sufficiently broad 
introduction into this historical knowledge of the Greek 
language, academic propsodeutics ought to be directed to this 
with an eye to theology, more than it has thus far been. 

Hebrew and Chaldee occupy a somewhat different position. 
As a language, the Arabic is linguistically rightly esteemed 
much more highly than Hebrew ; both because of its riches 
of forms and of the mighty world of thought to which it 
affords an entrance. Hebrew lies altogether outside the 
circle of higher culture. If it is of great importance to every 
literator to be familiar with at least one language of the 



Chap. IV] OF PROPEDEUTICS 623 

Semitic trunk, and though Hebrew offers special advantages 
for this, by the simplicity of its forms as well as on account 
of its significance to the most potent monument of our 
higher civilization, it will, nevertheless, probably be the rule, 
that theologians almost exclusively will apply themselves to 
Hebrew, not as a linguistic phenomenon, but as an auxiliary 
to the right understanding of the Old Testament. At the 
gymnasium it is generally a secondary matter, falling out- 
side the lines of a general training ; and at the academy few 
are willing to train the memory to any great extent. Yet 
it is an imperative necessity that an improvement shall be 
made in this direction. In our pulpits the fundamental texts 
of the Old Testament are spoken of by men who are not 
able to translate the simplest passage at sight, much less to 
retranslate into Hebrew. And in this condition of things the 
study of Hebrew is but a waste of time. 

In this connection, however, this question cannot be treated 
more fully. Only under the heads of general training and 
of special studies can Encyclopedia indicate to what other 
studies and languages theology stands organically related. 
And it is clearly seen that especially in the study of lan- 
guages, entirely different claims are made, both by the 
schedule of the general scientific training and by custom, 
from what theology must demand of these languages within 
her pale. The very propaedeutics for Theology demand 
such natural talents and persevering application to study, 
that the false notion must be abandoned that all those who 
are educated for the practical ministry of the Word, can 
be theologians in the real sense of the word. With the 
majority, the needed requirements for this are altogether 
lacking. The effort to have so high an aim realized by all 
would not develop, but stultify, many persons. Hence the 
old difference between pastors and doctors must be main- 
tained. Pastors should be sufficiently advanced to be able 
to take their stand intelligently at the scientific view-point, 
and to follow scientific development ; but apart from the 
study of theology as a side issue or as a favorite recrea- 
tion, the profounder study of theology as a science will 



624 §98. ORGANIC ARTICULATION [Div. Ill 

ever of necessity be the task of the few, who have extraor- 
dinary powers of mind at their disposal, as well as the neces- 
sary time and means. 

§ 98. Organic Articulation to Spiritual Reality 

Science is no abstraction. It is the reflection of life in 
our consciousness, and therefore it sustains the same or- 
ganic relation to reality as the shadow to the body by which 
it is cast. A single word, therefore, is needed to show the 
organic articulation of theology to spiritual reality. Thus 
far this has been suggested in a subjective sense, by the asser- 
tion that the mysticism of the Spirit is indispensable to the 
theologian. But from the nature of the case it is evident 
that for this subjective necessity there must be an objective 
ground. If the treatment of the subjective demands required 
at the hand of the theologian belongs to Hodegetics rather 
than to Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia nevertheless is bound to 
indicate the relation of this science to its own reality, from 
which the necessity of these demands is born. If in real life 
there were no antithesis between the domain of palingenesis 
and what lies outside, there would be no special Revelation, 
and in simple consequence there would be no question of 
theology other than in the style of Cicero. In like manner, 
if there were no operative grace, which effects enlightenment, 
articulation of the science to this spiritual reality would be 
altogether wanting. "The natural man receiveth not the 
things of the spirit of God." Now, however, the influence 
of this reality operates upon theology in a threefold way: 
First, materially, by the provision of matter which it brings 
to theology; secondly, by the influence of the Church, so 
far as that Church propels its confession as a living witness ; 
and thirdly, in the theologian personally, inasmuch as his 
own spiritual experience must enable him to perceive and 
understand what treasures are here at stake. Coordinated 
under one head, one might say that the Holy Spirit guaran- 
tees this organic articulation through the agencies of the 
Holy Scripture, the Church, and the personal enlighten- 
ment of the theologian. Hence piety of motive is not 



Chap. IV] TO SPIRITUAL REALITY 625 

enough. Piety is often present with the Buddhist also and 
the Parsee. But the piety referred to here must bear a 
stamp of its own, and cannot be identical with that pious 
impulse which operates also in fallen man, either poetically, 
heroically, or sentimentally. But it is very definitely that 
piety worked by God, which is possible only when a new life 
has been implanted in the sinner, and in which new life has 
dawned a higher light. In the second place, this piety 
should not remain isolated, but must manifest itself in the 
communion of saints ; not merely arbitrarily, but organically, 
hence in union with the Church, which affords a bed to the 
stream of the ages. And finally, in the third place, in its 
rise from the root of regeneration and in its union with the 
Church, this piety should not remain a mere mystical senti- 
ment, but, for the sake of affecting theology, it must inter- 
pret being into thought^ in order presently from thought to 
return to being by the ethical deed. 

Where this articulation, in the sense mentioned, is organi- 
cally present, so far as it concerns the articulation to reality, 
the position of theology in the organism of science is what it 
should be. Without this connection the theologian becomes as 
one who looks out upon nature through eyes half blind, as one 
almost deaf who studies acoustics, or as one devoid of all finer 
taste who devotes himself to aesthetics; the simple result of 
which is that neither nature, acoustics, nor aesthetics receive 
their dues. History indeed teaches that where this articula- 
tion to spiritual reality is wanting^ rationalism at once lifts up 
its head to attack theology in its very heart ; or, where this 
articulation is imperfect, sentiment is bound to prevail, and 
theology disappears in mysticism or pietism. For this reason 
the theologians of the best period of the Reformation ever 
insisted strenuously and convincingly upon the linking to- 
gether of theology to the Word, to the Church, and to per- 
sonal enlightenment; for in these three factors together is 
found the guidance of the Holy Spirit, without which no 
theology can flourish. The proper relation of these three 
factors has been considered at sufficient length above. Here 
it is merely observed that our theologians of the Reformation 



626 § 98. ARTICULATION TO SPIRITUAL REALITY [Diy. Ill 

period were embarrassed by the removal of theology from the 
seminary to the university. It was apparent in Paris, Lou- 
vain, and elsewhere, that the university life brought with it 
far more diversion and temptation than the secluded life at 
the seminaries. Now the Reformation in principle abandoned 
the seminary, and from principle gave theology its place in the 
university, and it became necessary to insist more strenuously 
upon piety and asceticism of life in the future theologians. 
The piety at the seminary was too much like a hot-house 
atmosphere, and results showed how little these hot-house 
plants amounted to the moment they became exposed to the 
less favorable atmosphere of common life. In view of this 
also they gave their preference to the freer university life. 
A piety, which there maintained itself and kept its virtue, 
was much better acclimatized to life in the world. At times 
they expressed the desire that the academy life should be suc- 
ceeded by at least one year of seclusion from the world in a 
more quiet seminary. But this was merely a corrective and a 
palliative, and their chief strength lay in exhortation, in moral 
pressure, in the power of the Word, to exhibit ever more 
clearly the folly and the contradiction of the study of theol- 
ogy without the corresponding fear of the Lord, trembling at 
His word, and communion with God in Christ. This implied 
at the same time that these demands of Scriptural, ecclesiasti- 
cal and personal piety were not exacted from the student only, 
but from every theologian after graduation from academy life. 
Because it involved the articulation of theology to the spirit- 
ual reality, this claim could not be abandoned at a single point 
of the whole way. Godliness alone is able to foster, feed and 
maintain that holy sympath}^ for the object of theology which 
is indispensable for success. 

There is a difference here also between the studies which 
touch the centrum of theology and those which lie on its 
periphery. A point of detail in Church history touches the 
spiritual reality at almost no single point, so that such a 
study by itself is not able to stamp a man as a theologian. 
But when theology is taken as an organic whole, and all its 
subdivisions are viewed from this central interpretation, the 



Chap. IV] § 99. ORGANISM OF THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS 627 

demand made by our fathers may not for a moment be aban- 
doned. "Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him." 

§ 99. The Organism of Theology in its Parts 

If theology lies organically wrought into the organism of 
science, it must also have an organic existence of its own ; 
which is simply according to the law that the organizing 
principle governs the entire organism in its parts. This 
brings us to the so-called division of the theological depart- 
ments ; an expression which is rightly subject to criticism, since 
one does not divide an organism, but finds its organic parts 
there and only needs to exhibit them. Hence there can be 
no question of drawing up a catalogue of departments, and of 
dividing these departments into certain classes, arbitrarily or 
after a rule derived from practice. Whatever is a corpus, 
and exists as a o-cjfia, brings its own division with it. In the 
second place, it must be carefully ascertained that one has 
the real corpus in hand. If, with Schleiermacher, theology is 
made to consist of a conglomerate of learned departments 
which find their unity in " the guidance and direction of the 
Church," the organism is lost, and there can be no more 
question of an organic division. In fact, Schleiermacher has 
really no division. In his opinion, theology as a whole has 
become an historic phenomenon, which he classifies in the 
historic group ; that which precedes it is no theology, but 
philosophy, and that which follows, as practical parts, and 
which Schleiermacher takes to be the chief end and aim, is too 
poor and meagre to save the name of theology. Neither can 
there be any question of theology with those who, though 
they still call themselves theologians, actually furnish noth- 
ing but a science of religions, and from their point of view 
are bound to follow more or less the division of Noack, who 
placed phenomenology as first in order, then ideology, and 
finally the pragmatology of religion. But Encyclopedia of 
Theology can have nothing in common either with Schleier- 
macher's conglomerate or with the science of religion. Its 
object of investigation is the body of Theology (corpus the- 



628 § 99. THE ORGANISM OF [Div. Ill 

ologiae), taken as an organic subdivision of the organism of 
science ; and this alone we are to consider. 

Taken in this sense, there is no essential difference of opin- 
ion concerning the division of the theological departments. 
It is held, almost universally, that a first group centres itself 
about the Holy Scripture, a second group has Church his- 
tory for its centre, a third group has Christian doctrine 
for its object, and Homiletics, together with what belongs 
to it, forms the fourth group. This fourth group may be 
called one thing by some, another by others ; some may differ 
concerning the order to be observed ; the classification of cer- 
tain departments belonging to each of these four groups may 
vary ; but this does not cancel the fact that a certain com- 
mon opinion indicates ever more definitely these four groups^ 
as proceeding of themselves from the organic disposition of 
theology. The only divergence from this of any importance 
that presents itself is, that a division into three groups 
still appeals to a few, which end is reached by uniting with 
Francke the so-called practical theology with systematic, or 
like Bertholdt the historic with the dogmatic, or like Kienlen 
the exegetical with the historical departments. But this 
difference need not detain us, since it merely involves a ques- 
tion of coordination or subordination. They who follow the 
division of three always accept a division of one of the three 
into two parts, so that actually they also acknowledge the 
existence of four groups. In itself it cannot well be denied 
that in the Holy Scripture, the Church, Christian doctrine, 
and in the functions of office, four separate objects are given, 
which compel a division into four principal groups. And the 
reduction of these four into three groups is serious only 
when, with Gottschick and others, the Bibliological group is 
denied a place of its own from principle. For then the 
principium of theology is assailed in its independence, and 
theology itself undermined. 

But by itself the assumption that there are four organic 
groups in the body of Divinity (corpus theologiae) is not 
enough. To be scientifically established, these four groups 
must of necessity proceed from a common principium of divi- 



Chap. IV] THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS 629 

sion. Thus far, however, this principium of division has not 
been allowed sufficiently to assert itself. This is to be attrib- 
uted to the fact that each of these four groups has been viewed 
almost exclusively /rom the view-point of the subject^ and no 
notice has been taken of how they lie in the object and how they 
are taken from the object itself. Hence the custom has become 
almost universal to distinguish these four groups as exegetical^ 
historical^ systematic and practical. But this custom is not 
logical. Distinction can be made between the exegetical, 
historical and systematic labors of the human mind, but 
it will not do to add to these three the practical departments 
as coordinate. The name of practical departments is not 
derived from the labor of the human mind, but from the 
purpose or object of these departments. For the sake of 
consistency, therefore, we should speak of the exegetical, 
historical, systematic and technical departments. Even with 
this method of distinguishing the groups. Encyclopedia can- 
not be satisfied. For this also locates the principium of divi- 
sion in the subject. It is the human mind that lends itself 
to the fourfold function of exegesis, of the study of history, 
of constructing certain data systematically, and of technically 
deriving from these certain theories. But just because the 
human mind is the subject of all science, there is no proper 
division of theology obtained thus at all, but simply a passport 
which, mutatis mutandis^ is applicable to every science ; and it 
is well known how a similar scheme has been applied to almost 
all the other faculties. But what is applicable to all sciences 
can never disclose to us the proper organic character of 
theology; and he who derives his principium of division 
exclusively from the subject, has no information to give con- 
cerning the organic existence of the organism of theology. 
Better progress would have been made if the example of 
Hyperius had been followed, which points to the Word, the 
Church and dogmatics as being the constituent elements. 
These, at least, are elements taken from the object and not 
from the subject, and therefore dissect the organism of the- 
ology itself. 

Even this, however, does not indicate the principium of divi- 



630 § 99. THE ORGANISM OF [Div. Ill 

sion which operates from the object. In the subjective division 
the principium operates out of the human mind, which lends 
itself to the four above-named functions. If, on the other 
hand, the organic division is to arise from the analysis of the 
object itself, then the principium of division must be derived 
from the object. This objective principium of division must 
be found in the principium of theology itself. In the devel- 
opment of its germ the plant of itself brings the organic 
spread of branches and stem. If the Holy Scripture is this 
principium of theology, it is plain that those departments 
should first be taken in hand which deal with the Holy Script- 
ure as such; then as a second group those departments 
which trace the working of the Word of G-od in the life of 
the Church ; then in a third group the departments should be 
combined which reflect the content of the Scripture in our 
consciousness ; and finally a fourth group should arise from 
those departments which answer the question, how the work- 
ing of the Word of God, subject to His ordinances, must he 
maintained. Thus the division into four groups is the same, 
but now it is taken from the object, after a principium of 
division which lies in the object itself. The Word of God, 
first as such, then in its working, after that according to its 
content, and finally in its propaganda. This is most accurately 
repeated when one speaks, first, of a Bihliological, then of an 
Hcclesiological, after that of a Dogmatological, and finally of a 
Diaconiological group. In the Bible you have the Word in 
itself; in the Church (^Ecclesia), you see the Word in oper- 
ation, objectified in the reality; in Dogma the content of 
this Word reflects itself in the sanctified human conscious- 
ness; and in the Biaconia, i.e. the office, the service of the 
ministry is indicated, which must be fulfilled for the sake of 
that Word. 

It is not by accident that these groups thus indicated cor- 
respond to the common division of Exegetical, Historical, 
Systematic and Practical Theology ; but is accounted for by 
the fact that each of these four organic members of the body 
of Divinity emphasizes a peculiar function of the human 
mind. In the investigation of the Bible as such exegesis 



Chap. IV] THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS 631 

stands first and always will. In the investigation into the 
Church the historiological activity of the mind is most fully 
exercised. With Dogma^ a systematizing function of the 
human mind is a first requisite. And with the Diaconia you 
enter upon the practical domain, and an insight is required 
into technique. If meanwhile it is the organic plan of the 
object which successively calls into action these several func- 
tions of the human mind, the real dividing virtue does not 
go out from your subject, but from the object; hence the 
division must be taken so as to correspond to the elements of 
the object. The subjective division corresponds to this, but 
must not be put in its place. Moreover, the correspondence 
is only partial. All labor bestowed upon the Bible as such 
is by no means exegetical. The historic-critical study of 
the several books as such is not exegetical. Neither is 
archaeology exegetical, etc. While, on the other hand, it 
must be remarked that all exegetical labor is by no means 
confined to the first group. The exegetical function of 
our mind is equally engaged in the investigation of Sym- 
bolics, of the Fathers, and in consultation with the sources 
of Church history. From this subjective point of view it 
was entirely logical on the part of Professor Doedes of 
Utrecht when he classified Symbolics under this first group. 
With the more precise analysis of the subdivisions of each 
group, as given in another volume, it will appear that the 
objective division leads in more than one particular to a 
modified division of the special departments. These, how- 
ever, will not detain us now, since this would occasion a 
needless repetition. Here we simply inquire after the four 
principal branches as they appear upon the tree of theology, 
and we think that we have indicated them in the Biblio- 
logical, Ecclesiological, Dogmatological and Diaconiological 
groups ; just by these names and in this order. 

The symmetry of these designations is justified by the 
fact that it is the human logos each time which seeks an en- 
trance into each of the four elements of the object. With 
each of the four groups it is ever the action of our logos 
which makes the knowledge of the object to appear from the 



632 § 99. THE ORGANISM OF [Div. Ill 

object. Then coordination of Bible, Church, Dogma and 
Diaconia — the last taken in the sense of office — is war- 
ranted by the fact that each of these four bears a supernatural 
character: the Bible, because it is the fruit of inspiration; 
the Church, because it is the fruit of regeneration; Dogma, 
because it presents to us the result of the guidance of the 
Holy Spirit in the consciousness of the Church; and the 
Diaconia, because the offices are appointed by Christ, and 
as organs of the churchly organism each office derives its 
authority exclusively from Christ, the King of the Church. 
Another name than that of Diaconia for office would be 
preferable, because " Diaconia " makes one think almost 
exclusively of the Diaconate. But we have no choice. 
Diaconia is the official name for office in the Christian 
Church, clearly defined for us in the New Testament. For 
office the Greeks used the expressions to epyov, rj iTrifxeXeLa^ 
V ^PXV^ V ^eLTovpyia, and for the office of judge to Bt/ca- 
(TTrjpLov. But no one of these expressions could here be used. 
^P^PXh could not be used, because the churchly office differs 
in principle from the magistratic office as a ministerial ser- 
vice ; and it would not do, since the expression archeological 
departments would have occasioned a still greater misunder- 
standing. AeiTovpyia of itself would have been no undesir- 
able term, but the name of Liturgy is differently employed, 
and would have caused more difficulty than " Diaconia." Be- 
cause of their indefiniteness the other terms could not be con- 
sidered at all. And thus it seemed by far the safest wa}^ to 
maintain the constant use of Scripture and to adopt again 
the New Testament expression for the churchly office, viz. 
Diaconia, notwithstanding the confusion a superficial view 
of it may occasion. It must indeed be conceded that in 
1 Tim. iii. 8, 12 and elsewhere, along with eVtWoTro?, the word 
Sid/covof; appears as also indicative of a definite office ; but when 
the question is raised as to what word the New Testament 
uses to indicate office without distinction of function, there 
is no doubt but that haicovia is the expressly indicated term. 
In Phil. ii. IT, 30 the word XeiTovpyia occurs, but not in an 
official sense. In verse 17 Paul speaks of the sacrifice and 



Chap. IV] THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS 633 

service of your faith (Ova la koI XetTovpyta Tf^<; TrLareco'^ v/jlcov), 
which he was to accomplish by his martyrdom, a saying in 
which it appears, from the additional word " sacrifice," that 
he by no means refers to his apostolic office. And in the 
30th verse he mentions a service (XetroupyLa'), which he was 
not to administer in his office to the Philippians, but which, 
on the contrary, they were to administer to him. But wher- 
ever on the other hand the administration of a definite office 
is mentioned in a technical sense, the word " diaconia " is 
used and not Xetrovpyia. In 1 Tim. i. 12 Paul declares that 
he is put into the ministry, i.e. into the diaconia, viz. into 
his apostolic office. In 1 Cor. xii. 5 it is expressly stated 
that there are diversities of ministrations (^BcaLpeaeL^ BcaKo- 
viSiv). In Eph. iv. 2 we are told that Christ "gave some, 
apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, evangelists ; and 
some, pastors and teachers " ; and all these together are 
called unto the work of ministering (ek epyov 8caKov{a^}. 
In this sense Paul speaks of himself constantly as a diaconos 
of Jesus Christ. Hence we must dismiss the objection that 
the name of diaconate is now indicative of but one of the 
offices. The use of it by the New Testament is conclusive. 
Neither was there an escape from the dilemma by the use of 
the terms " oeconomical " or "technical" departments. For 
one reason the symmetry would then be lost from the names 
of the four coordinates. And, moreover, the word technical 
would have brought us back again to the subjective divi- 
sion, and the word oeconomic would refer to the Church 
organization. Office alone stands coordinate with Bible, 
Church and Dogma as a supernatural element, and this 
word office cannot be applied to any other but to the Dia- 
coniological departments. 

Nothing need be said in justification of the name of Bihlio- 
logical departments, and the question of what is or is not to 
be classed under this rubric must be reserved for later dis- 
cussion. But we must briefly vindicate the name of Ecclesi- 
ologieal departments in the sense indicated above. At first 
sight it appears that the twofold assertion is contradictory, 
that the Church in this connection is a supernatural fruit of 



634 § 99. THE ORGANISM OF [Div. Ill 

regeneration, and that in another sense she is the product of 
the operation of the Word. This contradiction, however, is 
in appearance only. Even here thought may not be divorced 
from heing. Without the constant activity of the Holy Spirit 
the Scripture itself is inoperative, and only when this activ- 
ity of the Holy Spirit causes the Scripture to be illumined 
does this fruitful virtue go out from it. Suppose, therefore, 
that the Holy Scripture were to be carried into the world, 
without the regenerating and illumining activity of the Holy 
Spirit to precede, accompany, and to follow it, no church 
would ever be seen among the nations. But on the other 
hand also, if the action of the Holy Spirit had remained a 
pure mystery, and had not been unveiled to the consciousness 
by the Word, there would have been a hidden life-power in 
the souls of many people, but that power would never have 
become operative, would not have led one believer to join 
himself to another, and thus would never have revealed the 
Church as an observable phenomenon. In its hidden quality 
the Church therefore is the product of the regenerating action 
of the Holy Spirit, but theology cannot observe that action ; 
this remains hidden in mysticism ; and theology begins to 
reckon with it only when it makes itself outwardly manifest in 
word and practice. In this the Word of God is the leading 
power, and the touchstone as well, by which it becomes known 
whether we have to do with an action of the Holy Ghost, 
or with a fanatic fantasy or imagination. Hence both are 
true : in its spiritual essence the Church is a product of the 
action of the ITolg Grhost, and the Church, as an object ob- 
servable by theology, exhibits the operation of the Word. 

The name of Dogmatological departments can only be fully 
explained in connection with the treatment of the group. 
Here, however, let it be said that it does not mean a group 
of departments, in which, independently of the history of doc- 
trine, the investigator is to build up for himself a system of 
truth from the Holy Scripture. Actually this is never done. 
Every dogmatist who is a real theologian, voluntarily takes 
the history of doctrine into account. Care, then, should be 
taken not to appear to do what in reality one does not do. 



Chap. IV] THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS 635 

Independent formulation of faith is nothing but the criticism 
of an individual mind, which cuts itself loose from the com- 
munion of saints, takes its stand proudly over against the 
power of history, and cherishes faith in its own leading by 
the Holy Ghost but not in the guidance of the Holy Ghost in 
the Church of Christ. As a protest against this the name of 
Dogmatological group demands that Dogma, as a result of 
history, shall be taken as one's starting-point, and that in its 
central interpretation and in each of its subdivisions this 
Dogma shall be examined critically and ever again be tested 
by the Holy Scripture, in order that in this way at the same 
time its further development may be promoted. 

And finally, with reference to the order of succession, 
opinion can scarcely vary as to which group ought to be- 
gin and which group close the series. Of themselves the 
Bibliological departments take the precedence, because the 
Holy Scripture is the very principium of theology. And in 
the same way it is but natural for the official departments to 
come last, since they assume the completion of the Dogmato- 
logical departments. But a difference of opinion may arise 
as to the question, whether the Ecclesiological departments 
ought to follow or to precede the Dogmatological. Planck, 
Staudlin, and Harless put Systematic Theology first, and 
Historic Theology after it; but without doubt Hagenbach 
owes the great success of his encyclopedic manual largely to 
his accuracy of judgment in assigning the first place to the 
historical departments. Raebiger likewise took the same 
course, and to us also it is no question for doubt but that 
logical order demands the Bibliological group to be followed 
immediately, not by the Dogmatological, but by the Ecclesio- 
logical group. Our division admits of no other. Dogma has 
no existence at first, but it originates only by degrees, and it 
is unthinkable without the Church that formulates it. If thus 
we would avoid the mistake of formulating our dogmatics 
unhistorically directly from the Scripture, but rather seek 
to derive it from the Scripture at the hand of the Church,, 
then the Church as a middle-link between Bible and Dogma, 
is absolutely indispensable. To which, of course, it must be.- 



636 § 99. ORGANISM OF THEOLOGY IN ITS PARTS [Div. Ill 

added, that there is an " interaction " between each of the 
four groups. What man is able to bring any Bibliological 
department to a satisfactory close without taking the Church 
into account? How would you be able to understand more 
than a part of Church history, without keeping account with 
Dogma and the Office ? And how would Dogma be intelli- 
gible without the official function, which in councils and 
synods made their construction a possibility? This, however, 
applies to any division of any science whatever. In the pro- 
cess of history the fibres of all groups twine themselves about 
and around each other. To this, however, the organic division 
cannot adapt itself. The only question to be solved is this : 
how, in the idea of the organism, the several elements are to 
be originalh^ distinguished. And so taken, the idea of the 
organism of theology points out to us four principal branches 
which divide themselves from her trunk: First, that group 
which engages itself with the Bible as such; secondly, the 
group in which the Church appears as the revelation of the 
operation of the Word ; in the third place, the group which 
ranges itself about Dogma as the reflection of the Word in 
the consciousness of regenerated humanity; and finally, a 
fourth group, which has the office for its centre, as the means 
ordained of God to cause His Word continuously to assert 
itself. 



CHAPTER V 

HISTOKY OF THEOLOGY 

§ 100. Introduction 

The historic review of Theology, which closes this volume, 
cannot undertake to furnish a detailed narrative of the pro- 
cess run by theology in all its ramifications during these 
eighteen centuries. This process forms, not the subject of 
an encyclopedic, but of a proper historical investigation, which 
directs itself to a single department, or to a single period, or 
finally, to theology as a whole (as with Yon Zezschwitz, in 
his Entwichelungsgang der Theologie ah Wissenschaft^ Lpz., 
1867). In Encyclopedia, on the other hand, only the result 
of these investigations can be taken up and put into connec- 
tion with the encyclopedic course of thought. For the writer, 
especially, there is less occasion to enter upon details, for 
the reason that the history of Theological Encyclopedia, 
which runs so largely parallel with that of Theology, has 
elsewhere been treated by him more broadly than has hereto- 
fore been done, and too much detail in this chapter would 
only lead to needless repetition. The question whether this 
review should not have been placed before the chapter on 
the conception of theology is here answered in the nega- 
tive. It is entirely true that the forming of the conception 
of theology presumes the knowledge of theology as a his- 
toric phenomenon, but the historic knowledge in that sense 
may be presumed as universally known, and Encyclopedia 
can accomplish its task of pointing out the right way in this 
historic process, only when it is ready with its conception. 
According to the logical course of thought, the history of 
theology would really have to appear twice. First, a his- 
tory of the facts should be furnished which should include 
as fact everything that announced itself as a theological 

637 



638 § 100. INTRODUCTION [Div. Ill 

phenomenon, without discrimination or choice, not organi- 
cally, but atomistically. Then, with these facts in sight, the 
conception, principle, method and organic nature of theology 
should have to be determined. And reinforced with this 
insight, at the end another historic review should have to be 
furnished, but this time under the criticism of the idea of 
theology. This double treatment, however, of first recording 
indiscriminately the "facts," and after that, of indicating with 
discrimination and selection the course of the process in these 
facts, could not be justified practically. No single science is 
capable of encyclopedic treatment, until it has obtained suf- 
ficient influence to make its appearance a matter of general 
knowledge, at least with its own students. This also applies to 
theology, " the leading facts of the manifestation " of which 
are to be found in every Church history, so that he who is to 
treat of them encyclopedically may accept them as being gen- 
erally known. Encyclopedia discovers no new science, but 
investigates a science, the phenomena of which are every- 
where seen. However much, therefore, such a review of 
phenomena may form an indispensable link in the course 
of logical thought, which must precede the forming of the 
conception. Encyclopedia need not furnish that link, since it 
is of itself present. The second review, on the other hand, 
may not be omitted, for that is to show how, in connection 
with the encyclopedic results obtained, the process is to be 
understood in the phenomena. In this second review, the 
outline of this process will differ according to the nature of 
the results obtained by encyclopedic investigation. 

This critical review embraces six sections, each one of 
which covers a proper period. First, comes the period of 
naivety ; then the period of internal conflict ; then the period 
of triumph claimed too prematurely ; then the period of multi- 
formity ; after this, the period of apparent defeat ; and finally, 
the period of resurrection. Let it be kept in mind, that this 
review does not concern itself with the history of theology 
as the knowledge of God, but with the science which has this 
knowledge of God for its object. Hence, this history begins 
where special Revelation is completed. If the word " Theol- 



Chap. V] § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY 639 

ogy " is taken in the sense of science, then there is no theol- 
ogy of Isaiah, Micah, Peter, or Paul, but it arises only when 
special Revelation has reached its goal, and the task begins of 
introducing the content of this Revelation into the enlight- 
ened consciousness of regenerated humanity, and from this 
human consciousness to reproduce it. That this was the 
task imposed upon it, was not understood for a time by 
regenerated man. Had it depended upon primitive Chris- 
tianity, intensely satisfied with her great salvation, she 
would have withdrawn herself in mystical enjoyment of the 
same, in obedience to the same impulse which, especially in 
those methodistic circles which originated with the Reveil^ 
looks down upon theological effort with a certain spiritual 
self-conceit. But the Holy Spirit compelled her to under- 
take this task by the reaction, which in all sorts of Avays, 
from the consciousness of the unregenerate, set itself to 
dissect and to destroy the content of Revelation, and the 
Revelation itself. And only when in this way the need had 
rendered this scientific effort a necessity, a taste was created 
for this work, after the rule of the discendo discere discimus 
(by learning we learn to learn), and the inclination was fos- 
tered which explains the later growth of theology. This, 
at the same time, exhibits the folly of the desire to explain 
theology from the instituted Church. As far as the insti- 
tuted Church herself was concerned, she has almost never 
known the scientific impulse, but has ever preferred to devote 
herself to the still enjoyment of her great salvation. Theol- 
ogy, as a science, was, as a rule, more of an hindrance to her 
than a help; and theology owes its origin, its maintenance, 
and its guarantee for the future, not to the initiative of the 
Church, but to the initiative of the Holy Spirit, who was also 
its guide. 

§ 101. The Period of Naivety 

As soon as the Church had freed itself from the swaddling 
clothes of Israel's national life, the Christian religion went 
out into the world as a militant power. " Think not that I 
am come," said Christ, " to bring peace on earth, but the 



640 § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY [Div. Ill 

sword. For I am come to set man at variance with man." 
Also, " I am come to send fire on the earth ; and what will 
I, if it be already kindled?" Which sayings but delineate 
the character of Christian heroism in contrast to a timid 
irenics, which fills in every gap, and covers up every differ- 
ence. Conflict might have been in part postponed, if the 
world of that age had still been confined to the stage of 
infantile unconsciousness, or if a tabula rasa could have been 
made of all development attained. But this could not be, 
since the Christian religion was commissioned to appear in a 
Avoiid which boasted of a very ripe development, and spoke 
at times of the golden age of emperors, and which, notwith- 
standing its spiritual dearth, prided itself on great things. 
This placed the Christian religion as an opposing force over 
against the historical results of a broad, and, in part, a deep- 
searching development, which was sufficient unto itself, and 
which would not readily part with the sceptre of power over 
the spirits of men. Sooner or later the Christian religion was 
bound to conflict with the existing state of things at every 
point, and was forced at once to do this : (1) with the pseudo- 
religions, which were still dominant; (2) with the world of 
thought, which it first depopulated, and then undertook to 
populate with its own content; and (3) with the actual world, 
both national and social, the whole machinery of which it re- 
solved to place upon another pivot. This threefold antithesis 
shows itself at once with the appearance of the apostles, who 
would have been utterly impotent but for their spiritual 
heroism. Which heroism also, for the most part, they sealed 
with their blood. From the very beginning the conflict 
assumed the character of a life and death struggle ; on the 
one side being arrayed the ripest products which unregen- 
erate human nature had thus far commanded, and the richest 
development the human consciousness had attained to without 
higher revelation and enlightening ; and opposed to this, upon 
the other side, the "foolishness of the cross," which proclaimed 
the necessity of palingenesis, prophesied an entirely different 
condition which was to ripen from this, and at the same time 
announced a " wisdom " that was to array itself antithetically 



Chap. V] § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY 641 

against the " wisdom of the world." The outbreak could not 
tarry. What existed and bore rule was rooted too firmly to 
allow itself to be superseded without a struggle ; and the 
Christian religion, which was the aggressive force, was too 
heroic in its idealism to be silenced by satire or shame, by 
the sword or fagot. The conflict indeed has come ; for 
eighteen centuries this strife has never come to a truce ex- 
cept in form ; even now the antithesis of principles in this 
struggle is frankly confessed from both sides, and this con- 
test shall be decided only when the Judge of the living and 
the dead shall weigh the final result of the development of 
our human race in the Divine balance. 

It was natural that at first the Christian religion should 
stand most invincible in its attack on religion. In its 
strength of early youth, aglow with the fires of its first love, 
it presented a striking contrast to pseudo-religion, aged and 
worn out, maintained for the most part in forms only, and 
held in honor among the illiterate more than in the centres 
of culture and power. Within the religious domain Pagan- 
ism has almost nowhere been able to maintain itself, and 
Avithout exaggeration it may be said that almost from the 
very first the chances for the Christian religion as such were 
those of a veni^ vidi^ vici. Within the ethical-social and 
national domain, however, the struggle was far more serious, 
and it took no less than three centuries of bloody fighting 
before in Constantine the first definite triumph could be 
recorded. But much more serious still was the first attack 
in that strife within the intellectual bounds. Here at its first 
appearance Christianity stood with but a "sling and a stone 
from the brook" over against the heavily armed Goliath, and 
thanks to the providential leadings of the Lord, this Goliath 
also w^as made at length to eat sand. Christ Himself had 
drawn this antithesis in the intellectual world, when He said : 
" I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou 
hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes." And since theology belongs to 
this domain, and to no other, it is entirely natural, that at 
its first appearance theology bears the character of naivety. 



642 § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY [Div. Ill 

Not as though there had not been given in the Revelation of 
the New Testament itself the clear and entirely conscious 
tendency of this antithesis also in the full sense of principles 
involved; but it was reserved for later ages to bring out 
in all its deductions what was potentially revealed in the 
Scripture. Even now this task is by no means ended, and 
our own age has been the first to grasp the antithesis in the 
higher intellectual world between science within and science 
outside the sphere of palingenesis. 

Hence in this period of naivety there was no question 
whatever of a theology as an organic science, in the sense 
in which our age especially understands it. What the apos- 
tolic fathers offer is little more than exhortation, pious and 
serious, but as to principles very imperfectly thought out. 
From Quadratus to Hegesippus the apologists enter an acci- 
dental and fragmentary plea to parry assailants from the side 
of philosophy or invectives from the lips of public opinion, 
rather than place over against their world of thought a clearly 
conscious world of thought of their own. The education at 
most of prospective ministers of the Word, as well as of the 
youth of higher rank, was the leading motive at the schools 
of Asia Minor, Alexandria and North Africa. And in the 
pseudepigraphical literature tradition and the effort of diverg- 
ing tendencies are both active to create for themselves an 
authority to which to appeal. If then, without doubt the 
attack was made from the side of the Christians in the reli- 
gious domain, this was not the case in the intellectual domain. 
Here the pagans themselves took the initiative, either by 
combating the Christian faith directly, such as was done by 
Celsus, Porphyry and Hierocles, or, which was far worse, 
by introducing the Christian religion as a new phenomenon 
into their own pantheistic world- view. First with the 
Gnostics, and shortly after with the Manicheans, the Church 
of Christ suffered the severest strain, and it is certainly not 
because of her intellectual superiority that she came out 
triumphantly from this mortal combat. The strife indeed 
compelled severe processes of thought, and the deepest prin- 
ciples of life were freely laid bare, but the real character 



Chap. V] § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY 643 

of this antithesis was still so little understood that, with 
Clement and Origen, the victory was bought at the price 
of weakness of principle ; and the influence of " the knowl- 
edge falsely so called," which raises its head in heretical 
teachings, entered the very pale of the Church already in 
this first period. If, therefore, the decision in this strife had 
been reached by a hand-to-hand combat of intellectual powers, 
there is no doubt but that Paganism would have carried the 
day. Evidently, therefore, the Church owes the different 
result to the fact that it soon began to manifest itself as an 
organizing power, which ethically judged the pagan world, 
and finally enlisted the political power in its ranks. Hence 
the severest trial was suffered at the hands of the Manicheans, 
which is so impressive a phenomenon for the reason that in 
this an antipodal Church arrayed itself as a religiously organ- 
ized power in opposition to the Church of Christ, and the 
false gnosis of Manicheanism assailed the Church with her 
own weapons. And this Manichean trouble assumed such 
wide proportions that for a time it seemed as though the 
Church were on the verge of being swallowed up alive. The 
flood of this church-like organized gnosis had forced its way 
from the heart of Asia to the most westerly parts of North 
Africa. Even Augustine felt the after-pains of it. 

If it is asked whether in this first period there was no 
manifestation of an impulse to apply oneself in a positive 
sense to that intellectual pursuit in which theology finds its 
appointed task, then be it said that this positive element 
soon presented itself; for ministers needed to be educated, 
preaching necessitated exegesis and fixing of ethical stand- 
ards, the organization of its own power gave rise to the 
problem of Church government, and, after some time had 
passed, the need of a review of history became urgent 
of itself. But for no single moment did these positive 
studies rise above the primitive water-mark; or where this 
was the case, as at Alexandria, they made too vain a show 
of feathers borrowed from pagan speculation, so that almost 
instinctively the Church perceived at once that this rich de- 
velopment promised more danger than gain. If it takes small 



644 § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY [Div. Ill 

pains to observe in this first period of naivety the first buds 
of almost all the departments of theology, it cannot be said 
that at that time theology had already matured as a self- 
conscious power in its organic unity. For this the needed data 
were wanting ; the element of genius was too largely absent 
from the persons ; and where this genius was unmistaka- 
bly present in men like Origen and in a few teachers in the 
North African school, it soon showed itself top-heavy, and 
by its one-sidedness became heretical. The growth was too 
early and too exuberant, but there was no depth of soil, 
and because the development in the root was unequal, this 
element of genius soon outgrew its own strength. There 
was conflict between a twofold life- and worldrview, which 
undoubtedly governed the general state of things, but the first 
issue in this struggle with Paganism is owing to other fac- 
tors than intellectual superiority. And in this first period, 
which was entirely na'ive, theology neither attained unto a 
clearly conscious insight of its own position, nor to a clearly 
perceived antithesis in opposition to " the knowledge falsely 
so called." Hence, when, after Constan tine's appearance, 
Paganism withdrew, there was almost no one to perceive 
that the real question of difference on intellectual grounds 
was still unsolved, much less was it surmised that fifteen 
centuries later the old assailant would again war against the 
Church of Christ, and, armed to the teeth, would repulse her 
from more than half the domain which, through the course 
of the centuries, had appeared invincibly her own. Naively 
they lived in the thought that Goliath lay vanquished once 
and for all time, and that the Lord would return before the 
antithesis had also been exhibited in the world of intellect, 
both as a conflict of principles in the lowest depths of our 
existence, and differentiated above in all the branches. 

But however naive this first development of theology may 
have been, even then it showed potentially all the richness of 
its colors. In two respects : first, although theology is no 
abstract speculation, but as a positive science has its origin 
from life itself, in this first period it furnished a so-many- 
sided intellectual activity, that to-day there is almost no 



CiiAP. V] § 101. THE PERIOD OF NAIVETY 645 

single department of theology Avliich does not trace its 
beginnings to this first period. And, secondly, in that in 
this first period the several tendencies which henceforth 
were to dominate the study of theology delineate themselves 
almost completely. Even then dualism asserted itself, and 
tried to make the Christian religion shine b}^ itself as a 
novum quid apart from the preceding development of our 
human life, and therefore made its appearance as a ten- 
dency which was partly mystical-religious, and partly pietis- 
tical-nomistic. In opposition to the one-sidedness of this 
dualism, which was for the most part apocalyptic, the 
monistic-syncretistic tendency gained a hearing in this first 
period, which, while it maintained the unity between the 
light of nature (lumen naturae) and the light of grace 
(lumen gratiae), ran the risk of abandoning the specific 
difference between the two. Similarly also, in this first period, 
there was seen upon the one side an attempt to find the point of 
support in the spiritual authority of the Holy Scripture, and, 
on the other side, to obtain a foothold in the consolidation 
of ecclesiastical authority. And in those early centuries also 
the tendency showed itself to combine whatever good there 
was in each of these four chief points of view in an eclectic 
and arbitrary way, by a compromise which avoided the con- 
flict of principles. The conflict between the Judaistic and 
Pagan element should not be coordinated with that between 
these five tendencies as if it were similar to them, since it falls 
of itself under the antithesis alread}^ named. A separate men- 
tion of this specific struggle, however, should be made, in 
so far as it worked a permanent effect in the Christian 
Church, both in the pseudo-symbolic stamp of the Romish 
Church, in Chiliasm so prevalent again in these later times, 
and in Sabbatism and in all strivings after holiness by 
works that seek their point of support in the Old Testament. 
Under all these forms, the antithesis is the same between 
the real manifestation of Christ and what preceded this 
manifestation by way of preparation. And while this ques- 
tion, which first presented itself objective-historically, re- 
turned subjectively, later on, when Christ became real, to 



646 § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT [Div. Ill 

every one who was converted unto Him, it enters too deeply 
into the life of the Church itself not to be classified under 
a proper head. 

§ 102. The Internal Conflict 

The change brought about by the reign of Constantine 
the Great is vastly important also in the history of theol- 
ogy. Not that he personally exerted a dominating influence 
upon theology, but in so far as the change of the religion of 
the throne offered surest proof that the conflict against Pagan- 
ism had reached a provisional decision, and had terminated in 
a complete triumph of the Christian religion. It is indeed 
noteworthy that, without any direct connection, the eccle- 
siastical events at Alexandria run almost parallel with the 
political events. In 313, the very year of the second edict of 
Milan, Arius was ordained a presbyter in Alexandria. In 321 
Arius is condemned by the Synod at Alexandria, while Con- 
stantine is at the point of coming over to Christianity in 323. 
And in 325, at the council of Nice, Arius falls, Athanasius 
appears upon the scene, and the emperor of the Roman Em- 
pire, which was still at the height of its power, casts his 
influence in the scale of the worship of the Christ as " Begot- 
ten, not made, and of one essence with the Father." And 
with this all other relations are changed. The Christians 
become polemics, and compel heathen scholars to appear as 
apologists. Not the Christian religion, but Paganism, is now 
denied a starting-point in public life. The influence upon 
public opinion has now passed into the hands of presbyters 
and bishops. Pagan cult bleeds to death for want of finan- 
cial support, while Christian ceremonial begins to exhibit 
pomp and splendor. Moral preponderance is turned en- 
tirely to the side of the Christian religion. Henceforth the 
higher classes follow after the Cross in ever-increasing 
numbers. Christian schools flourish in proportion as heathen 
schools wane. And, as is generally observed in such 
changes in the state of affairs, from now on, talent, the 
energy of personality, and the power of the word turn their 
back upon Paganism, and place themselves at the service of 



Chap. V] § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 647 

the newly arrived religion. And this explains the almost 
immediate transition from the naivety of the first period, to 
the almost midlife maturity that marks this second period. 
The fourth and fifth centuries are contrasted with the second 
and third almost as light and shadow, and this sudden blos- 
soming of intellectual life and even of genius within the 
Christian domain is so overwhelming, that already in the 
sixth century unmistakable signs appear of deterioration, 
and in the seventh century the decline of the middle ages 
has already set in. The almost simultaneous appearance of 
the dominating Fathers in the East, as well as in the West, by 
which the heroic names of Athanasius and Augustine have 
been attached to the orthodox development of the Church and 
theology for all ages, — a fact which finds no explanation 
from history, nor from psychology, but only from the provi- 
dential leading of the Creator of spirits and geniuses, — proves 
of itself, that the change brought about by Constantine marks 
the beginning of the fundamental period of Christian the- 
ology. All that follows after can only be built upon the 
permanent foundation laid by these gigantic architects. For 
both these cycles of Patres, which group themselves about 
Athanasius in the East, and about Augustine in the West, 
neither lean nor rest upon what went before, but stand en- 
tirely upon their own feet, with Atlantic strength to support the 
dcA^elopment coming after them. This appears most clearly 
from comparison between the meagre efforts of earlier apolo- 
gists and the Oivitas Dei of Augustine. With every earlier 
apologist it was a mere effort of hands and feet to protect 
the body against the assailant, but in Augustine we meet Avith 
a Herculean figure that destroys the monster with a stroke 
of the sword and makes the dragon retreat into his hole. 
Augustine is the Christian triumphator, before whose tri- 
umphal chariot are borne the spoils of Paganism and Mani- 
cheism as trophies. In him and after him the Christian 
religion is dominant^ while nothing remains for Paganism but 
the convulsions of approaching death. Gloriously has Gol- 
gotha been avenged, and the cross, which was once an 
accursed tree, is now a symbol of honor. 



648 § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT [Div. Ill 

By this, however, theology obtained an entirely different 
character. Whereas in the first period, it had been chiefly 
bent upon self-defence against the arch-enemy, that enemy 
was now vanquished, and thus the antithesis between regen- 
erate and unregenerate human consciousness could no longer 
be the most conspicuous. When the school, at which Proklus 
flourished last, was closed at Athens, and the last supporters 
of classic tradition fled to Persia, there was no more need for 
a further conflict about this deepest and most incisive antith- 
esis. As an intellectual power. Paganism no longer stood. 
All intellectual power was now withdrawn within the walls 
of the Christian Church; consequently, the antitheses which 
were to impel theology to action could not but have their 
rise in the heart of that Church itself. Hence it became a 
conflict within its own bosom. 

If the question is raised whether the deepest significance of 
this conflict is not still stated b}^ the antithesis between nature 
and grace^ between Humanism and Theism, the answer lies 
close at hand. It continued of course always the same antithe- 
sis, but with this difference, that now the anti-Christian power 
made its appearance dressed in a Christian and even an eccle- 
siastical garb. After persecution had ceased and the Christian 
religion had been duly inaugurated in its career of honor, the 
transition to Christianity became so colossal, especially among 
the upper classes, and so largely a matter of fashion, that there 
could scarcely be any more question of an actual transforma- 
tion of spirits. People were everywhere baptized, but as 
baptized members they brought their pagan world-view with 
them into the Church. Two classes of Christians therefore 
soon stood arrayed in a well-ordered line of battle over against 
each other : those who were sincere, who were truly partici- 
pants of the new principle of life, and were but waiting for 
the propitious moment in which to work out this principle 
into a proper world of thought ; and on the other side the 
pseudo-Christians, who from their natural, unregenerate life- 
principle reacted against the Cross, in order to maintain the 
old world-view, now exhibited in Christian form. It is this 
conflict which compelled the Christian Church to awake from 



Chap. V] § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 649 

her mystical-practical life to energetic activity of spirit, and to 
create theologically from her own life-principle a correspond- 
ingly adequate world of thought. And this was done Christo- 
logically and Soteriologically. First Christologically, because 
the central starting-point of her activity lay in the Christ, 
so that the just relation between the Divine and human, 
between nature and grace, had first to be established in the 
dogma concerning Christ. And after that, Soteriologically, 
because in the application of the salvation which had appeared 
in Christ, everything depended upon a correct insight into 
the true relation between God's action and man's action in 
bringing about his salvation. In both these questions the sin- 
cere Christians proved the stronger, because the conflict was 
prosecuted from out their own life-principle. As long as it was 
merely the formal question between the Divine and human 
factors in the process of attaining certainty in Divine things, 
the philosophers were their superiors, and their defence could 
not be one of principle. From the scientific view-point, their 
apology was weak. But when called upon to formulate dog- 
matically who Christ was, and how grace operates in the Child 
of God, the tables were turned. The pseudo-Christians had 
to deal with a matter foreign to them, while those who 
were sincere handled what constituted a component part of 
their own life, the object of their love and worship, the cause 
of their eternal joy. Thus the sympathy of a holy love 
sharpened their intellectual capacities, and it explains itself, 
how these unexcelled Fathers of the Church have caused the 
stream of theologic life to flow from the rock as with a magic 
w^and, and at the same time have given to theology its inner 
certainty. Theology could never have substantiated itself by 
any demonstration from without; and only by starting out 
from the Christ and the work of grace in the sinner, and, 
objectively as well as subjectively, formulating accurately 
the antithesis between the life of nature and the life of grace, 
did it clear for itself formally also the way to vindicate its 
view-point. 

For this reason the antithesis between philosophy and the 
Christian religion could not be a stimulant in this period. 



650 § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT [Div. Ill 

Already theology feels herself mistress in her own home, 
and sees in philosophy nothing but a tamed lion, which she 
harnesses before her triumphal chariot. At Byzantium classic 
study had obtained a proper place of honor, from the days 
of Emperor Photius. Boast was made of Plato and of 
Aristotle. And it was in the footsteps of Aristotle that 
John of Damascus in his "E/c^ocrt? printed an irremovable 
dogmatic stamp upon the entire Church of the East. But 
for theological studies in general, philosophy in all its rami- 
fications offered none but subsidiary services. Centrally 
theologic development in this period is dogmatic, and the 
wide exegetical studies have no other tendency than to 
establish scripturally once for all the truth that had been 
found. Critically the work done does not extend beyond the 
content of Scripture, and formally what is attempted is at most 
to keep in hand good codexes rather than bad. Hermeneutics 
is established in order, after given rules, to overthrow false 
exegesis of heretical doctores, and the extent to which 
Hieronymus busied himself with isagogical questions had 
merely this object in view — viz. placing at the disposal 
of the coming clergy all sorts of things worthy of their 
notice. Thus everything was rendered subsidiary to the 
development of dogmatics, including even historical studies ; 
and thus dogmatics appeared mostly in the form of polemics, 
to combat false representations. Time was not yet ripe for 
the organic construction of a system, which should include 
all the dogmatic treasures. Even Augustine did not vent- 
ure upon this. What Origen had too early attempted, 
served as an example to deter others, and what John 
Damascene accomplished for the Eastern Church has done 
much toward the petrifying of that Church; even though 
it may not be overlooked, that this very early check put upon 
dogmatic thought saved the Eastern Church from many 
serious errors, in which at a later date the Western Church 
lost itself. 

But if theology triumphed over heresy in its own bosom 
during this period, it was not all gold that glittered. This 
intellectual victory had not been achieved except in union 



Chap. V] § 102. THE INTERNAL CONFLICT 651 

with the ecclesiastical organization ; and the Church with 
her ban had anathematized whoever had been conquered by 
theology. This effected too close a bond between theology 
and the Church, which resulted after the death of the 
coryphaei in a limitation of liberty for theology as a science, 
even as in the Church everything was compelled to exhibit 
itself too largely in one mould and move in the same direc- 
tion. Multiformity of life was lost in the uniformity of the 
traditional ecclesiastical type, and as soon as opposition 
ceased, theology lost the spur for action, and almost every 
reason for existence. Her practitioners were like an army 
dismissed, since victory had been achieved. The heroic 
period of the Fathers in the fourth and fifth centuries, 
therefore, is followed by a period of lassitude and deathlike 
stillness, which gradually turned into the barrenness of the 
Middle Ages. At first this baneful uniformity did not make 
itself so strongly felt. The schools of Antioch and Alexan- 
dria, of Nisibis and Edessa, of North Africa and of Rome, 
were strong with the vigor of youth, each having a theologi- 
cal tendency of its own. But when presently the Eastern 
schools lost their significance, and the West appeared in the 
foreground, and in the West Rome's preponderance assumed 
proportions which became more and more decisive, the dis- 
tinction was gradually lost sight of between "heretical de- 
parture " and " difference of tendency among the orthodox." 
All differences were looked upon with envy. Unity in the 
most absolute sense had become the watchword. And when 
finally this unity was carried off as spoils, it seemed more 
easy to maintain this unity thenceforth by ecclesiastical 
decisions than by theologic debate. Theology had done 
her duty, now the Church was to have the word. Not 
theology, but the Hierarchy, as early as the sixth century, 
held the reins of power which are to maintain the principle of 
the Christian life. And though it is self-evident that there 
still remained certain variations, and that absolute unity has 
never been obtained, Rome, nevertheless, preferred to allow 
these variations sufficient playground within its own organi- 
zation, and when needed to provide diversion by monastic 



652 § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH [Div. Ill 

orders. Especiall}^ the removal of the centre of gravity of 
the Church from the East to the West, from civilized to the 
still uncivilized nations of the Germanic-Gallic world, materi- 
ally aided this dismissal of theology from service, and en- 
couraged the withdrawal of study into the convents, as in 
so many centres of learning in the midst of uncultivated 
conditions. 

§ 103. Prematurely claimed Triumph 

The long period extending across the four centuries which 
precede and the four centuries which follow the Dark Ages, 
is of importance for the development of Theology in its sec- 
ond half only. This is not intended to undervalue the rich 
development of intellectual life in the several monasteries, 
at the courts of the Carolingian princes, and under Alfred 
among the Anglo-Saxons, before the night of the Middle 
Ages set in, but merely to indicate that the great progress 
of learning rendered no material aid to the development of 
the conception of theology as such. It brought this devel- 
opment scarcely an indirect good. The study of the better 
Latin authors was continued, the Church Fathers were read 
and quoted, series of excerpts from the Fathers (catenae 
patrum) were compiled for exegesis, chronicles were dili- 
gently written, Alcuin prepared even some sort of a dog- 
matic compendium from the works of Augustine, entitled 
De fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis lihri duo^ which 
was rapidly passed on from hand to hand ; but however 
bright and clear this learning was compared to the night of 
ignorance that still rested darkly upon Europe's west and 
north, it produced no scientific results. There were fresh 
wave-beats in these waters, of momentary duration, as when 
Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel advocated adoption- 
ism, Paschasius Radbertus constructed the theological expla- 
nation of transubstantiation, and Gottschalk undertook once 
more to assail the semi-Pelagianism that had crept in on every 
hand, and the conflict about the filioque became necessary as a 
defence against the Eastern Church ; but these efforts effected 
no enduring results. The Church tacitly giving shape to 



Chap. V] § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH 653 

public thought by her orthodoxy weighed too heavily upon 
the life of the spirit; and no question was settled scientifi- 
cally, for after a brief trial it was dismissed by the authority 
of the ecclesiastical courts. Even an Isidorus Hispalensis, a 
Venerable Bede, Alcuin, Hrabanus Maurus, or Hincmar of 
Rheims left no single work of creative genius behind them. 
And when the ninth century produces an independent 
thinker in the person of John Scotus Erigena, he distin- 
guishes between affirmative and negative theology (theo- 
logia /caracfyaTLfci] and airo<jiariKrf)^ and thereby merges real 
theology into philosophy, and that, a philosophy in which the 
old sin of Pantheism renews itself in a way more serious than 
with Origen. So indifferent, however, was his time to these 
deeper studies that this pantheistical philosopher held his 
post of honor undisturbed at the court of the Carolingians, 
surrounded by an orthodox clergy, and his writings were 
condemned for the first time three centuries afterward by 
Rome at the mouth of Pope Honorius III. as "being full 
of the vermin of heretical depravity." 

This does not imply that these three centuries passed 
by to no purpose and without important results, but what- 
ever labor did more than protect the inherited theological 
treasure, directed itself almost exclusively to what was calcu- 
lated to strengthen the Church in a practical way and civilize 
the nations of the West. First, the system of monasticism 
was deeply thought out, carefully ordered and clearly out- 
lined. Then the development of ecclesiastical law took 
a higher flight, together with the ordering of civil relations, 
which were included in canonical law. No little effort was 
made to establish upon a sound footing the cathedral schools, 
which had been founded by the Carolingian princes, and to 
provide them with good material for study. And, finally, 
there was no want during these ages of edifying literature of 
a pious trend, mystical flavor and sound content. But none 
of these studies touched upon theology in her nature and 
being. No thought was expended upon her as such, and 
there was still less of an effort made to vindicate her relation 
to the non-theological development or to the reason. The 



654 § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH [Div. in 

Church was mistress in the entire domain of life. The 
opposition of ancient Rome's classical development had been 
silenced by the decline of the culture of the times. Germanic 
development was still too much in its infancy to renew the 
old strife, and thus of itself the struggle for principles came 
to an end; the more because the ever-restless spirit of the 
Greek came under the pressure of Islam, which prevented 
it from exerting an influence upon the Church of the West. 
The Dark Ages, which soon appeared, were but the natural 
consequence of what went before. The wind blew no longer 
from any quarter. It was a dead calm. On every hand 
nothing but stagnant waters were seen. And thus, for want 
of an animating impulse, the life of study waned. 

It was very different, however, in the second part of this 
long period. In 1096 the first crusade was undertaken. This 
was an expression of Christian, chivalrous heroism, which not 
only aroused the peoples from their sleep of death, but also 
restored to the Church her sense of unity with the Church of 
the East, and exerted no less mighty an influence upon the- 
ology. Here we must retrace our steps to Emperor Jus- 
tinian I., who closed by a decree the pagan school of Athens, 
and thereby obliged its scholars to flee to Persia. There 
these men tried to establish their classical school in safety, 
and to prosecute their studies ; but however much they were 
disappointed in this, it was nevertheless under Persian, and 
more especially under Syrian influences, that in the eighth cen- 
tury, under the high protectorate of the Abbasides, the classi- 
cal studies came to Bagdad, in order there, and presently in 
Spain, to call into being a scientific life which far surpassed 
the civilization of Christian Europe at that time. By contact 
with this rich Mohammedan life the old classics were intro- 
duced again in Europe ; and when, in competition with Islam, 
the classical studies were resumed in Byzantium, under Bardas 
and Photius, the old Greek-Roman world of thought entered 
Christian Europe simultaneously from these two sides, to 
recall it from its practical, mystical and ecclesiastically tradi- 
tional life to a higher development of its self -consciousness. 

The new theological activity which was thus called into 



Chap. V] § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH 655 

beiiiQf bears the name of Scholasticism, which name is derived 
from docere in scola, and for this reason Scholasticism is also 
connected with the rise of the universities. At first ac- 
quaintance the classical world did not stand high in the 
general esteem. The beautiful in the world of old Hellas 
and the virility in the world of old Rome was not loved by 
the Middle Ages and Scholastics. This love flamed up only 
when the Byzantine scholars fled from Turkish violence into 
Italy, and when, as a fruit of their activity, Humanism made 
its entry. No, the Scholastics cared less for Homer, ^schy- 
lus, Virgil and Horace, than for Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. 
On the first acquaintance with the works of Greece's great 
philosophers especially, it was soon evident that these men 
were profounder students than the clergy of the times. And 
since these Scholastics knew too little Greek to read Aristotle 
at once in the original, they obtained by their acquaintance 
with the thinker of Stagira about such an impression as a Zulu 
neofro must receive from a visit to the arsenal at Woolwich. 
What were the weapons they had thus far used, when com- 
pared to the rich supply of arms from the arsenal of Aristotle ? 
And as the Christian knights were inspired to high exploits 
by crusade upon crusade undertaken against Islam, the sight 
of this glittering arsenal in the writings of Aristotle made the 
scholars of those days quickly cast aside the sling and stone 
and immediately arm themselves with the lances of Aris- 
totle's categories and with the armor of his distinctions, and 
so to gain trophies for their Christian faith. At the outset 
they foresaw none of the danger this implied. As yet they 
perceived nothing of what was to come to light in Abelard, 
in the Nominalists, and presently in the Humanists. They 
did not surmise that the Greek-Roman tradition held a spirit 
peculiar to itself, and that when once called out from its 
grave this spirit would soon prove able to enlist once more 
the sympathies of thinking minds, and for a second time let 
loose against the Church the old enemy which had spoken in 
Celsus and Porphyry. They thought they were simply deal- 
ing with the armor of a buried hero, and that they had a 
perfect right to appropriate this armor to themselves. 



656 § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH [Div. Ill 

Even thus, however, there was something very beautiful 
in this impulse. If it lay in the nature of the case that the 
world of thought of unregenerated humanity must of neces- 
sity be different from that of regenerate humanity walking 
in the light of God's Word, the task of theology was not ex- 
hausted in a self-defence against this world of natural thought. 
She was called, in the first place, to populate her own world 
of thought and to regulate it. The content of the Divine 
Revelation had been committed to her, not to possess it as 
gold in a mine, but to delve it out of that mine, and then to 
convert that gold into all sorts of ornaments. The content 
of Revelation had not been given dialectically, nor had it been 
cast in the form of discursive thought. That which had been 
revealed of God could therefore not be taken up as such into 
the human consciousness. It had first to be worked over, 
and its form be changed so as to suit human capacity. What 
had been shown to the Eastern mind in images and symbols, 
had to be assimilated by Western thinking and reproduced 
intellectually. For this it was indispensable that the believ- 
ing Christian should also learn how to think, and how to 
sharpen his powers of thought, in order to grasp the content 
of his faith, not resting until he had succeeded, from the 
root of palingenesis and by the light of photismos, in lead- 
ing the human consciousness to a coherent, comprehensive 
world of thought entirely its own. And this they failed to do. 
In the period of naivety the struggle with Paganism had been 
broken off rather than fought out. Under the inspiration of 
the Fathers of the Church all the powers of thought had been 
directed to the establishing of the mysteries, to prevent here- 
sies; but in the following ages they neglected to analyze the 
further mysteries of the faith to the root. Thus they failed 
of creating a Christian Philosophy, which should give to the 
Christian world, to the glory of God, what old Hellas had 
possessed in Plato and Aristotle, thanks to Socrates' initia- 
tive. This want has been felt by the Scholastics, if only 
feebly. They saw that Aristotle could teach them how to 
think. They were ashamed of the fact that the scholars of 
Bagdad and Cordova excelled the Christians in virility of 



Chap. V] § 103. PREMATURELY CLAIMED TRIUMPH 657 

thought. And then they, too, threw themselves upon the 
world of thought, they worked themselves mto it, and became 
masters in it of the first rank, with a virtuosity which claims 
our admiration till this day. Suddenly they rise like cedars 
from the barren tablelands of the Dark Ages. And in so far 
as they, immovable in their faith, did not shrink before any 
intellectual labor, however gigantic, they are still our exam- 
ples as intellectual heroes. He who refuses to consult with 
Thomas Aquinas weakens himself as a theologian. 

However, we have qualified their labor as a triumph grasped 
prematurely. In the preface of the latest edition of Lom- 
bardus' Sententiae and Thomas' Summa^ Paris, 1841, the edi- 
tor wrote in a high-pitched key of these Sententiae and this 
Summa : " Stupendous works indeed, the former of which 
ruled all Europe for a century and a half and gave birth to 
Thomas Aquinas, while the latter, being assuredly the very 
sum of theology, has ruled all Europe for five centuries from 
the day it was brought to light, and has begotten all suc- 
ceeding theologians." This flattering speech aims none too 
high ; for after Thomas there has no one arisen who, as a theo- 
logian, has thought out the domain of sacred study so com- 
prehensively from all sides, and who has penetrated as deeply 
to the bottom of all questions so heroically as he ; and only 
the latest development of philosophy has given the stream 
of theological thought a really new bend. The very rise of 
this newer philosophy, however, has discovered how greatly 
Thomas was mistaken, when he thought that he had al- 
ready hit the mark, when he placed the formal intellectual 
development of the Grecian world at the service of the 
Church. Undoubtedly it is since then only that theology 
within its own ground has come to a richer development, 
such as it had never known before, which has enabled it to 
assimilate and to reproduce no mean part of the treasures of 
Revelation ; but the struggle for principles, which theology 
had to carry on for the vindication of her own right of ex- 
istence, had scarcely yet begun. Theology and philosophy 
(taken now in the material sense) are too closely identified 
bv Thomas. He takes too little account of the world of 



658 § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY [Div. Ill 

thought of unregenerate humanity as an independent whole. 
It is with him still too much a subtle gymnastic of intellect, 
which defends every part of the Church confession of that 
day by distinctions, and again by distinctions against objec- 
tions, and vindicates the same as being in harmony with 
reason. And it was especially serious because thus the 
foundation of the building of Christian Doctrine was sought 
by far too much in the subject itself and for the subject in 
the understanding. For thus finally reason sat in judgment, 
and though reason appeared in favor of the doctrines of the 
Church when speaking from the mind of a Thomas, there 
was no guarantee that this same reason in another subject 
would not presently arrive at an opposite conclusion, and 
then where was the triumph of the Christian religion ? In 
Abelard it had already been shown with what fire men were 
playing. That fire had been extinguished by the holy energy 
of Bernard of Clairvaux and by the ban of Innocent II. But 
what was to be done, when presently that same fire should 
break out again in wider extent and with greater fury? 
There was an increase of knowledge, but victory had not 
yet been achieved. The mystical Scholastics were already 
aware of this, for which reason they offered dialectical pro- 
ficiency the support of the fervor of devotion and faith. But, 
of course, in this also there was no lasting security. That 
securit}^ could be regained only when return was made to the 
Holy Scripture. 

§ 104. Development of Multiformity 

The subject in hand is neither Religion nor the Church, 
but Theology as a science, and therefore in the period pre- 
ceding the Reformation the emphasis falls upon the unfolding 
of multiformity. The return to the Holy Scripture as the 
sole principium was of far-reaching importance. Such men 
as Thomas Aquinas, etc., fully intended to base their confes- 
sion upon the Holy Scripture, and on the other hand it is 
also known that while devoted to the study of the Script- 
ures, Erasmus held to the confession of Rome till his death. 
Similarly the motive of the newer development has been 



Chap. V] § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY 659 

sought in the principle of free investigation, but only to be 
overthrown by the confession of the Reformers themselves, 
that they never pleaded for a freedom of investigation which 
lacked all foundation in faith. It is self-evident, moreover, 
that he who finds the motive of the new evolution of the 
science of theology too exclusively in the return to the Holy 
Scripture or too formally in freedom of investigation, excludes 
thereby Romish theology altogether, and arbitrarily contracts 
the domain of theology. That the labor of the Romish 
Church was at first disqualified, is readily understood ; but 
this narrow view has been abandoned a century ago, and in 
theological circles the learned Jesuits especially are duly 
recognized again. It certainly cannot be questioned that 
the Romish theology of the last decenniums can claim the 
name of theology in the strict sense of the word with far 
more justice than what is still brought to the market under 
the name of theology by the men of the Science of Religion 
or by the speculative or ethical modern tendency. In view 
of this the point of departure for this period lies for us in the 
development of multiformity. Not as if such a multiformity 
were intended by Luther or Calvin. This is by no means 
asserted here. At Wittenberg, as well as at Geneva, the con- 
viction was unassailable for long years that their own confes- 
sion bore an absolute and exclusive character. Everything 
that contradicted this was a falsification of the truth, just 
as in both spheres of the Reformation one's own Church was 
held to be the purest, not merely by way of comparison, but 
so as to be actually looked upon as the only lawful contin- 
uance of the Church of the apostles ; and Rome's Church 
was not only rejected as deformed, but, as a false imitation of 
the Church, was abhorred by the epigones of the Reforma- 
tion as the Church of the Antichrist. And this could not be 
otherwise at first. Notwithstanding the fact that the schism 
of the Eastern Church had been continued for more than four 
centuries, men had still refused to consider it anything more 
than a schism. Age after age they were accustomed to the 
idea that truth, which of necessity must be absolute, was 
also bound to maintain this absolute character in the unity of 



660 §104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY [Div.III 

form and expression. And while the rigorous maintenance 
of the unity of the Church rendered this result possible, the 
very thought of a certain multiformity for the life of the 
Church could not commend itself to any one. This concep- 
tion of unity had entered so deeply into the public conscious- 
ness of those times, that while multiformity was already in 
existence de facto^ and caused its effects to be felt, they still 
argued and acted as though there were never anything but the 
single, uniform Church. It did not enter into the common con- 
sciousness of that day that the uniformity of the Church had 
found its logical expression in the papal idea, and that with the 
refusal of obedience to the Pope that uniformity was broken 
forever, never again to be restored. In the days of the in- 
terim the dream was still dreamed, to restore by mutual con- 
sent, a unity which would also include the papal Church. 
The numberless conferences between Lutherans and Re- 
formed, and between Reformed and Anabaptists proceeded 
without distinction, from the desire to unite in the unity 
of the faith everything that had broken with Rome. The 
Bj^zantine spirit, which had come upon the German princes, 
rejected the idea of all multiformity in the Church within the 
boundaries of each, so resolutely and definitely that at length 
the principle of cuius regio eius religio, i.e. " that the religion 
of the crown must be the religion of the people," could for a 
while rule as the leading thought. And when finally, yield- 
ing to the force of facts, and compelled by the European- 
Romish league to political cooperation, the correlation of the 
Lutheran and Reformed elements could no longer be neglected, 
their mutual recognition resulted more from the impulse of 
self-protection than from the impulse of a clearly self-conscious 
conviction. 

That this delusion of unity assumed with the Lutherans 
forms that were so much more sharply outlined than with 
the Reformed, — leading first to the rejection of the Reformed 
exiles on the coast of the North Sea, and finally to the decapi- 
tation of Crell in 1601, — cannot be attributed to the fact that 
the Reformed already occupied on principle a far wider stand- 
point, but was exclusively the result of their clearer insight 



Chap. V] § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY 661 

in the liberty of the Church. They claimed an autonomous 
life for the Church under her only King, Christ Jesus, and 
though later they went so far in granting the State a civil 
right over sacred things (ius circa sacra), that this liberty 
of the Church became actually an illusion, yet from the 
beginning their standpoint was more accurately chosen. In 
Lutheran lands, the princes, aided by teachers of their ap- 
pointment acting as ecdesia docens, took the guidance of the 
Church in their hands, while the Reformed demanded that 
all ecclesiastical questions should be decided by the lawful 
representatives of the churches, convened in Synod. This 
is the reason that the State, in Reformed lands, had less in- 
terest in the exclusion of those of differing opinions, since 
it found in these diverging groups a support over against the 
ever-bolder pretensions of the autonomous churches. Hence 
the principle, "that the religion of the crown must be the 
religion of the people," could never gain a foothold in the 
Reformed lands, the result of which was that from the begin- 
ning the ecclesiastical life in these lands exhibited a char- 
acter of greater multiformity. Exiles, who were refused 
a shelter elsewhere, found protection in Reformed coun- 
tries, and thus the idea of the liberty of conscience, which 
is an immediate result of multiformity, became of itself an 
established doctrine in the Reformed kingdoms much earlier 
than in Lutheran and Romish states. He who found 
himself in trouble for his religion's sake had no standing 
or chance for life anywhere but in the Reformed lands, viz. 
in Switzerland and in the Netherlands. 

But it cannot be questioned for a moment, that to Luther 
the honor belongs of having dealt the fatal blow to the false 
uniformity of the Church. When Luther burned the papal 
bull, that unity was essentially destroyed. He derived the 
moral right for this action from no canonical rule, but from 
the authority of God, by whose Word it was assured unto 
him in the deepest depths of his conscience. And by this 
the subjective-religious principle received its right as a 
power, which, if needs be, could defy churchly authority. 
And when Luther's initiative found an echo in the hearts 



662 § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIEOEMITY [Div. Ill 

of many thousands, and became the point of departure for a 
separate Church organization, multiformity of churchly life 
became thereby eo ipso^ a fact. For if Luther held to the 
idea that every one who, like himself, broke with Rome, 
was bound to arrive at like results with himself, from the 
nature of the case this idea could not be maintained. For so 
soon as another effort made its appearance by the side of his, 
which showed itself possessed of the power to be even more 
efficient in founding churches than his, he might indeed 
write to Zwingli from Marburg : " You are people of another 
spirit " ; but after the Pope had been renounced, and the 
State had no power outside of its boundaries, there was no 
authority to prohibit this third " Church-forming " power from 
making its appearance and from consolidating itself : 1517 
made Luther powerless in 1529. That the Anabaptist and 
Socinian movements, in their dualistic-mystic and moderate- 
rationalistic activity, have not produced like results, and 
still flourish in small groups at most, which have never 
obtained any universal significance, is not attributable to the 
fact that these Anabaptists and Socinians were refused the 
right of existence ; for men would fain have treated the Cal- 
vinists in the same way, and the Calvinists also barely toler- 
ated the Martinists ; but it was the immediate result of their 
want of " Church-formative " (Kirchenbildende) power. 
Such then was the lesson of history, viz. that the Church 
of Christ was bound to reveal herself in more than one form, 
but, at the same time, that this multiformity of revelation did 
not depend upon an arbitrary whim or freak, but was deter- 
mined by the spiritual and forming power which appeared, or 
did not appear, in the several tendencies that raised their heads. 
Gradually, and of itself, this multiformity of the churches 
led to the recognition of four fundamental types of Church 
formation, apart from the Armenian, the Koptic, and other 
churches in the far East ; viz. as the fruit of the Reformation 
the Lutheran and the Reformed^ and by the side of these the 
G-reek and the Romish. Four principal groups, each one of 
which exhibits a churchly character of its own, reveals a pecul- 
iar effort, assumes a proper form, and as such, also represents 



Chap. V] § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY 663 

a special theological tendency. Without attracting at once 
attention to itself as such, this multiformity was sealed 
confessionally in the dogma of the visible Church as the 
revelation of the invisible Church. So long as the Romish- 
papal delusion of unity was maintained, it was entirely 
natural that the visible Church should be identified with 
the invisible. Where there is only one revelation of the 
essence, a graded difference may be viewed as an obstacle 
to the adequateness of the revelation. But Rome removed 
even this objection by the separation between the Clergy 
and the Laity. As soon, however, as other church for- 
mations arose, each of which pretended to be the revela- 
tion of the Church, while they lacked the courage to reject 
each other's baptism, or to deny salvation in its absolute 
sense to those of the other confessions, the essence and the 
revelation of the Church fell of themselves apart. From 
henceforth what one saw could no longer be the Church, 
the body of Christ, and hence of necessity, simultaneously 
with the multiformity of church formations, the dogma 
originated of the visible Church as not being adequate to 
the invisible Church, or to the mystical body of Christ. 

With this an entirely different state of things entered in 
for theology. So long as uniformity maintained itself, 
there was no other theology conceivable than that which 
scientifically systematized the confession of the Church. It 
could take no other point of departure than in the insti- 
tuted Church, and could arrive at no other result than had 
been found by the instituted Church. Investigation of the 
Holy Scripture had no aim when the instituted Church 
tendered an official Latin translation, and in exegesis pre- 
scribed the analogy of faith even to minutest particulars. 
Everything was known from the start; hence there could 
be no thirst after truth ; to furnish a dialectic proof for 
the confession of the Church was superfluous for believers, 
and could serve no purpose for unbelievers, since these 
were bound to maintain silence for fear of the anathema 
of the Church. All the benefit, therefore, which one de- 
rived from Scholastic Theology was the pleasure, noble 



664: § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY [Div. Ill 

enough in itself, which one enjoyed in exhibiting the shin- 
ing brightness of the Church's confession in all its parts, 
even when seen by the light of the data of logic. But this, 
of course, became entirely different when the multiformity 
of the churches became an established fact. Apologetics 
over against Paganism, which had gradually become super- 
fluous, was no longer sufficient to answer the needs of the 
day, but controversy with the confessions of the other Church 
formations now presented itself. The unity of the Church 
had to be maintained under the multiformity in its reve- 
lation. And no longer able to derive his point of departure 
from the Church, the theologian had to seek this elsewhere. 
Thus theology became free, not in the sense of ever being 
loosened from her object and principium, but so that each of 
the Church formations expected her to vindicate its effort, 
and thus from that moment on had to reckon with her criticism. 
It was self-evident that, resulting from the difference of spirit- 
ual disposition and spiritual sphere, the multiformity of the 
Church formations should also communicate its multiform 
stamp to theology. But theology as such could never dis- 
miss the problem of how this multiformity was to be brought 
into harmony with the unity of the body of Christ. It had 
already been seen that the truth of God was too rich and 
the great salvation in Christ too aboundingly precious, by 
reason of the Divine character exhibited in both, for them 
to be able to reach their full expression in one human form. 
And though the several nations assimilated one and the same 
truth and the selfsame salvation, the disposition of the several 
groups of people was too many-sided not to adopt them in dif- 
ferent ways, and to reproduce them in different manners. 
The claim could never be surrendered that each one for him- 
self should accept and confess the truth in the way in which 
it appeared most accurate to him and satisfied his needs most 
fully. But human limitations were at least recognized ; and 
theology could not rest until, together with all the care which 
she bestowed upon the treatment of one of her concrete 
forms, she at the same time allowed the relation between the 
ideal and concrete fully to exhibit itself. She also was not 



Chap. V] § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY 665 

able to make the full content of Divine truth shine forth in 
a single deduction. She could not be studied except by men, 
and hence like the Church life itself she remained subject to 
human limitations. But since the churches could deal only 
with the concrete result, and thus incurred the danger of 
communicating a sectarian flavor to their life, and of losing 
sight of the catholicity of the Church as an organism, it was 
the mission of theology to raise herself on the wings of the 
idea above what was exclusively concrete, and from this 
higher vantage ground to vindicate the good and perfect 
right of the instituted churches to their confession and life- 
tendency. 

This higher call inspired theology with a zeal such as she 
had not known since the fourth and fifth centuries. Again 
she had to fix her point of departure objectively in the Holy 
Scripture and subjectively in palingenesis, and in the faith 
awakened by this. Again free access to the Holy Script- 
ure was accorded her. The Vulgate, as the sanctioned trans- 
lation, fell away. Exegesis became a serious study by which 
to master the content of the Divine Revelation. In dogma, 
with the Scripture as the touchstone, distinction had to be 
made betw^een truth and error. Church history was called 
upon to point out the several streams of Church life which 
had been held back under the false papal unity, and to 
exhibit them as still existing historically. The difference 
between formation and deformation of churches had become 
tangible, and it was the task of theology openly to make 
exhibition of the difference between the two. Thus the- 
ology became an independent power, with a task of her own, 
with a life-purpose of her own, and bound to the claim of 
truth rather than to any churchly decision. 

However energetic and sparkling the life was which charac- 
terized this reformative development of theology, it would 
have been better still if she could have conquered her lib- 
erty, in the good sense, at once. But in this she only partially 
succeeded. Her growth outside of the universities is scarcely 
worthy of mention, and at the universities, because of the 
appointment of the professors by the State, she became too 



666 § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY [Div. Ill 

greatly subject to the influence of the State. Provisionally 
this was preferable to being bound to the instituted churches, 
but it entailed the subsequent loss of separating her too greatly 
from the life of the Church, and of allowing too great an in- 
fluence to be exerted upon her by non-theological factors. 
Since the ministry was educated almost exclusively at the uni- 
versities, theology, with her diverging tendencies and schools, 
has undoubtedly exerted a disturbing influence upon the 
churchly life. And as a reaction against this it has called 
the narrow-hearted sectarian stream into life, which would 
prefer to confine theology to an ecclesiastical seminarium. 
This measure would restore the Romish passion for uniform- 
ity, but now without the counterpoise which Rome still 
furnished in its world-wide organization and in its orders. 
Compulsion here is of no avail, and since the multiform- 
ity of churchly life goes and must go as far as it is post- 
ulated by the variations in the organic life of the Church, 
so likewise, in order to fulfil her mission, theology must be 
left entirely free, and cannot be limited by any boundary 
except by such as is indicated in the life-relations themselves. 
Not the State, as having authority in the sphere of the mag- 
istrate, but science and the Church are here to determine the 
boundary. Theology is inconceivable as a science studied for 
mere pleasure, and therefore every theological effort, which 
does not find a corresponding stream in the Church, is bound 
of itself to bleed to death. Hence for a while it progressed 
fairly well, i.e. as long as the stream of churchly life pro- 
pelled itself with power. Both Lutheran and Reformed 
theology completed their first task when they explained 
systematically these two new tendencies in the churchly 
life and in the churchly confession, and thus vindicated 
them over against Rome as well as over against each other. 
But so soon as the pulse of the churchly life began to 
beat more faintly, foreign factors began to undermine the 
healthful vitality of theology as well. This became evi- 
dent in the syncretistic and pietistic tendencies, even before 
Rationalism, as the train-bearer of Philosophy, threw down 
the glove to her. 



Chap. V] § 104. DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIFORMITY 667 

In the seventeenth century Syncretism appeared as a nat- 
ural reaction against the multiformity of churchly life. And 
it cannot be denied that George Calixtus was actuated by 
a spiritual motive. The controversy and the separation in 
churchly life had caused the instituted churches to lose too 
much from sight their unity in Christ and their sodality as 
revelations of the body of Christ, and it was against this that 
Calixtus raised his irenical voice. On the other hand, it 
must be said that this was accompanied by a certain humanistic 
indifference to the points of dogma which were in question 
between the churches. A man like Calixtus did not under- 
stand that one could really be concerned because of a contro- 
versy about Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation, or the 
negation of Substantiation. And what was worse, he was 
not sufficiently acute as a theologian to construct his irenics 
theologically, so that he saw no other means than to go back 
to the councils of the first centuries. Hence his effort could 
not be crowned with success. This irenical wave went down 
as rapidly as it had risen. Not, however, without reminding 
theology of her vocation to maintain more faithfully the es- 
sential unity of the Church in the midst of her multiform 
tendencies. Holding itself too closely to the instituted 
Church, theology had departed too widely from the spirit- 
ual life of the Church as an organism. 

This last fault avenged itself in the movement of the Pie- 
tists. Theology had become too abstract. She had found 
her foundations in the Holy Scripture, but she had taken that 
Holy Scripture too one-sidedly as a revelation of doctrine, 
and had thereby lost too much from sight the spiritual 
reality, and had forgotten that if Luther had found the 
rock-foundation on which he stood in the Scripture, he had 
also clung with both hands to that rock. In the end, the 
inspiring motive for theology must always come from the 
subject. Without the spiritual alliance between the theologi- 
cal subject and the spiritual reality of which the Holy Script- 
ure brings us the revelation, a barren Scholasticism is con- 
ceivable, but no vitalized and living theology. This was; 
felt by Spener; hence the reaction that went forth from him 



668 § 105. THE APPARENT DEFEAT [Div. Ill 

and from his followers against orthodox theology; a reac- 
tion, however, which, as is generally the case, wanted to 
throw out " mit dem Kinde das Bad," i.e. " the bath with 
the child." At heart Pietism became anti-th.Qological. How- 
ever much of invaluable good it has brought to the life of the 
churches, it was unable to restore theology from its barren- 
ness to new freshness. It rather cooperated with the syn- 
cretistic movement, and so allowed non-churchly factors free 
play to work destructively upon theology. Reformation 
theology has not known a second quickening (^elan) in the 
higher sense of the word. She has worked out more minutely 
what was at first treated only in vague terms. She has fur- 
nished rich detailed studies. With hair-splitting exactness 
she has picked apart almost every conceivable antithesis, with 
the Lutherans as well as with the Reformed. And especially 
in exegesis and in Church history she has continued to gather 
her laurels, but as theology she has remained stationary ; and 
when the stream of churchly life has flowed away from under 
her, she has finally proved to be an expanse of ice that could 
.not be trusted, and that broke and sank away the moment 
Philosophy threw itself upon her with all its weight. 

§ 105. The Apparent Defeat 

The reformation movement certainly succeeded in the six- 
teenth century in exorcising the pagan spirit from Humanism. 
Whatever gains this revival of the pagan spirit achieved 
in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was not 
capable of obtaining a solid footing among the nations of Mid- 
dle and Northern Europe. And when the conflict which Hu- 
manism in league with the Reformation had undertaken 
against the papal power approached its end, it can be said with- 
out exaggeration, that the Reformation had become Herrin im 
Hause^ and that Humanism had to adapt itself to the per- 
formance of all sorts of subsidiary service. Paganism in its hu- 
manistic form was bent too much upon the outward world, and 
was too little animated and too vaguely conscious of being a 
bearer of a special life -principle, to enable it to place a life- 
and world-view of its own over against that of the Reforma- 



Chai'. V] § 105. THE APPARENT DEFEAT 669 

tioii. But if it subjected itself, this subjection was not 
sincere, and the theologians soon perceived that children 
of another spirit cooperated with them in the other faculties. 
The more Protestantism was interpreted from its negative 
side, and free investigation was taken as investigation with- 
out a spiritual tie, and the more the liberty of conscience, and 
gradually even that of the press, assisted in the publication 
of what was thought and pondered, so much the more did 
a spirit of free thought begin to develop itself among the 
well-to-do classes in the countries of the Reformation, which 
impelled individual thinkers to devise philosophical systems, 
and which among the great masses created an irreligiousness 
without ideals, that entered into an ever sharper conflict with 
the mystical and ideal character of the Christian religion. 
It has by no means been the thorough idealistic systems of 
Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz that have created the great- 
est commotion. Much more dangerous were the effects 
worked by Deism, which spread across the Continent from 
England; by the spirit of the Encyclopedists, which caused 
its power to be felt from France ; and by the so-called " Auf- 
klarung " (Illumination) which quickly asserted itself in Ger- 
many. To some extent the origin of these influences was 
truly philosophical, if philosophical be taken as antithesis to 
theological ; but as a rule they were of too low an order 
and of too little exaltation to justify their claiming for them- 
selves the honorable name of philosophical in the higher 
sense of the word. It was a low moralism, such as plain 
public opinion loves, which clips every wing, and knows no 
higher standard than the everyday and common one. Low 
shrubberies might grow ; each oak or cedar, that wanted to 
lift up its head, was immediately cut down. For the ideal 
there was nothing to spare but mockery, poetry went down 
into sentimentalism, admiration was unknown, men were 
weaned from all higher impulses and laughed at the fools who 
still persisted in a desire to go up in the balloon. Of course 
such a time-spirit and the Christian religion stood over 
against each other as two antipodes. Too bad that in just 
those days the Christian Church and Christian Theology 



670 § 105. THE APPARENT DEFEAT [Div. Ill 

lacked the holy fire and energy of heroism to withstand 
with righteous indignation this spirit of dulness and su- 
perficiality. But the churches and the universities them- 
selves were caught in the meshes of this unholy spirit, and 
men soon saw in Rationalism the caricature of what Christian 
theology ought to be. And this in turn was attacked by 
Supernaturalism in such a way as to make the entire defeat 
of Christendom still more humiliating. Pietistic circles, to be 
sure, were maintained in Lutheran lands, and mystical and 
methodistical circles in Reformed lands, which hid the salt of 
the Gospel, lest it should lose its savor, but these spiritually 
attuned circles failed of exerting any saving influence upon 
official churches and official theology. The ground on 
which this Deism and this Aufklarung offered battle was no 
ground on which the Christian Church or Christian theology 
could join battle. The thrusts given did not carry the sting 
sufficiently deep to reach the deepest life-consciousness. 
Thus it remained a mere skirmishing, a constant skirmishing 
on the outer lines, and no one seemed to realize into how 
shameful a corner they were being pushed. It was no longer 
the Church against the world, nor theology against the wis- 
dom of Paganism ; but it was the world in the Church, and 
it was theology irrecognizably metamorphosed under ration- 
alistic and naturalistic influences into a caricature of itself. 

But, however feebly, the antithesis continued to be felt. 
Rationalism over against Supernaturalism certainly implied 
that the scientific consciousness of unregenerate humanity 
refused to undergo the influence of Revelation, and therefore 
demanded that the treasure of Revelation should first be 
examined at the frontier by reason. And, on the other 
hand, the very appearance of Supernaturalism as such im- 
plied an effort to make certain demands for the scientific con- 
sciousness of regenerate humanity, by which Revelation might 
escape from testing by the reason. The deepest antithe- 
sis between theology and the wisdom of the world was cer- 
tainly present in this almost fatal conflict ; only it received 
no special emphasis as such from either side. Rationalism 
did not appear against the Church, but in the Church, and 



Chap. V] § 105. THE APPARENT DEFEAT 671 

adapted itself, therefore, to forms which often did not fit 
in with its principle, and weakened itself by its utter want 
of piety. But Supernaturalism also was not able to array 
itself for a conflict of principles. It betraj^ed somewhat more 
of a religious sense, but of a kind which never reached the 
warmth of the mystical life of communion with the Infinite ; 
which, therefore, scarcely noticed the psj^chological antithe- 
sis; and being almost more hostile to Pietism than to Ration- 
alism, it, for the most part, sought strength in sesquipedalian 
words and in lofty terms ; and deemed its duty performed by 
the defence of faith in the great facts of Revelation, indepen- 
dently of their spiritual significance. 

As a result of this wrong attitude, theology lost in less than 
half a century almost all the authority it had exerted in 
the circles of science and public opinion. It was no longer 
thought worth while to continue a conflict which, from both 
sides, was carried on with so little tact and spirit. It soon be- 
came evident that the interval which separated Rationalists 
and Supernaturalists grew perceptibly less. He who was 
still bent upon making a name for himself as a theologian, 
withdrew into some side study of theology, in which at least 
there were historical and literary laurels to be gathered. The 
Church life went into a decline. The life of the clergy par- 
took somewhat of the character of the times when " priest 
laughed at priest " in the days of Imperial Rome. And it was 
very clear, as early as the middle of the eighteenth century, 
that theology had nothing more to say with respect to the 
great problems which were presenting themselves. Thus the 
French Revolution came, without thinking it worth her while 
to assume any other attitude toward the Church than that of 
disdain. The " Italia fara da se," which was a proverb con- 
cerning Italy's future in the days of Cavour could then have 
been prophesied concerning Philosophy : Fllosofia fara da se ; 
i.e. "Philosophy will have her own way." Theology could 
exert an influence in three ways : at her frontiers she could 
give battle to the spirit of Paganism, or she could make a 
deeper study of the faith of the Christian Church, as had 
been done in the fourth and sixteenth centuries, or, finally, 



672 § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION [Div. Ill 

she could make the mystical and practical life of the Church 
express itself in conscious action. But when theology did 
none of these three, but squandered her time in a skirmish, 
which scarcely touched upon the first antithesis, which went 
outside of the mysteries of the faith, and had no connection 
with the mystical-practical life of believers, she herself threw 
her once brilliant crown down into the dust, and the opponent 
could not be censured for speaking of theology as an antiquity 
no longer actual. 

§ 106. The Period of Resurrection 

The nineteenth century is far superior to the eighteenth, 
not merely in a cosmical, but also in the religious sense. 
Here also action effected reaction. The bent-down spring 
rebounded at last. And it will not readily be denied, that in 
our nineteenth century a mystical-religious movement has 
operated on the spirit, which may be far from comparable 
to the activity of the Reformation, but which, leaving out 
of account the Reformation period, seeks to rival it in recent 
history. Revivals of all sorts of tenets belong to the order 
of the day, in Europe as well as in America. In spite 
of its one-sidedness. Perfectionism has gained a mighty fol- 
lowing. Methodist and Baptist churches have developed an 
activity which would have been inconceivable in the eigh- 
teenth century, and which affords its masterpiece in the Sal- 
vation Army. Missions have assumed such wide proportions, 
that now they have attained a universal, historical signifi- 
cance. New interests have been awakened in religious and 
churchly questions, which make manifest how different a spirit 
had come to the word. Even negative tendencies have found 
it advisable, in their way, to sing the praises of religion. And, 
however unfavorably one may judge of Mormonism, Spiritism, 
etc., it can scarcely be denied that their rise and temporary 
success would not have been possible, if the problem of reli- 
gion had not taken a powerful hold upon the general mind. 
If then, after the shameful defeat of theology in the period 
of the " Illumination " (Aufklarung), we may affirm an un- 
deniable resurrection of theology in the nineteenth century, 



Chap. V] § 106. THE TERIOD OF RESURRECTION 673 

let it be said that this is owing, first of all, to the many mys- 
tical influences, which, against all expectation, have restored 
once more a current to the religious waters. A breath of 
wind from above has gone out upon the nations. By the 
woes of the French Revolution and Napoleon's tyrannies the 
nations were prepared for a new departure in an ideal di- 
rection. The power of palingenesis has almost suddenly 
revealed itself with rare force. By the very radicalism of 
the revolutionary theory the sense of a twofold life, of a two- 
fold effort, and of a twofold world-view has come to a clearer 
consciousness in every department. Moreover, it may not 
escape our notice, that it has pleased God, in almost every 
land and in every part of the Church, to raise up gifted per- 
sons, who, by Him "transferred from death into life," as 
singers, as prophets, as statesmen, as jurists, and as theolo- 
gians, have borne a witness for Christ such as has not been 
heard of since the days of Luther and Calvin. 

It would, however, be a great mistake to explain the resur- 
rection of theology from this powerful revival alone. It 
may not be overlooked that this mystical-pietistical revival 
was more than indifferent to theology as such. As far as it 
called into life preparatory schools for ministers and mission- 
aries, this revival lacked all theological consciousness, and 
undertook little more than a certain ecclesiastical training for 
its students ; a sort of discipline more bent upon advancing 
a spirit of piety and developing a power of public address, 
than upon theological scholarship. It was more the " passion 
of the Soul," and the desire after religious quietistic enjoy- 
ment, that inspired general activity, than the purpose, cher- 
ished even from afar, to give battle in the domain of thought, 
or to maintain the honor of Christ in the intellectual world. 
The life of the hearty or emotions, and the life of clear conscious- 
ness were looked upon more and more as separate and dis- 
tinct, and religious activity, which found itself strong within 
the domain of the emotions, but very weak on intellectual 
ground, deemed it good tactics to withdraw its powers within 
the domain within which it felt itself to be invincible. If 
this reveil had been left to itself, the vocation of Christianity 



674 § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION [Div. Ill 

to take up the content of Revelation also into the thinking 
consciousness, and from this to reproduce it, would readily 
have passed into entire forgetfulness. And it is Philosophy 
which has been used by the King of the Church as a means 
of discipline to force His redeemed once again to enter upon 
that sacred vocation. 

It was only when the Christian Church had lost her 
authority completely and theology lay in the sand as a con- 
quered hero, that in Kant and his epigones the men arose 
who, anew and more radically than their predecessors, re- 
sumed the ancient conflict of the Greek-Roman Philosophy 
against the Christian religion, which had been broken off 
rather than decided in the third century. The logic of 
principles demanded this. Where two contrary principles 
come to stand over against each other, it is of no avail that 
the conflict between them is abandoned after the manner 
of Constantine, or that, as was done in the Middle Ages 
and in the first period of the Reformation, it is suspended 
and limited by the preponderance of churchly authority. 
Such contrary principles but await the first favorable oppor- 
tunity to take new positions from both sides, and to continue 
their inevitable conflict, if possible, still more radically. Car- 
tesius, Spinoza and Locke began this conflict from their side 
at a somewhat earlier date, but without making the Christian 
religion feel that it was a conflict of life and death. And 
only when the " Illumination " (Aufklarung) had depleted 
the Christian religion entirely of her honor, did Philosophy 
obtain the chance to come forward in full armor. For though 
it cannot be denied, that with such men as Kant and Fichte, 
and especially Schelling, and in part also with Hegel, Phi- 
losophy did by no means tread the Christian religion under 
foot, but rather tried in its way to restore the honor of the 
Christian mysteries, which the Church had shamefully aban- 
doned ; yet it would but betray color-blindness if we refused 
to recognize how the gigantic development of modern Phi- 
losophy has revived most radically the ancient and necessary 
conflict between the unregenerate consciousness and the prin- 
cipium of palingenesis, and with ever greater precision places 



Chap. V] § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION 675 

the pantheistic starting-point over against Christian Theism 
— even though its first ardor is now followed by a period of 
exhaustion. 

The greatest step in advance effected by this consisted in 
the fact that Kant, investigated the thinking subject, and 
thereby gave rise to a riper development of the organic con- 
ception of science. The principle and method of science had 
been made an object of study before, but in the sense in 
which at present we recognize an organic whole of science 
it was still entirely unknown, even in the days of the Refor- 
mation. At that time men still produced piece-work, each 
in his own domain, and effected certain transitions at the 
boundaries by the construction of temporary bridges ; but 
the subject, as the organic central point from which went 
forth the whole activity of science as in so many beams of 
one light-centre, was not yet apprehended. Hence the earlier 
theology, however richly furnished within its own domain, 
makes an impression which is only in part truly scientific. 
Before Kant, theology had as little awakened to a clear con- 
sciousness of itself as any other science, and much less had the 
position of theology in the organism of science been made clear. 
However much Kant and his contemporaries and followers 
intended injury to the Christian religion, the honor is theirs 
of having imparted the impetus which has enabled theology 
to look more satisfactorily into the deepest problems that face 
it. Schleiermacher has unquestionably exerted the most 
preponderant influence upon this resurrection of theology. 
This, apart from his titanic spirit, is owing more especially 
to the fact that in Schleiermacher the mystic-pietistic poAver 
of the life of the emotions entered into so beautiful and 
harmonious a union with the new evolution of Philosophy. 
At however many points his foot may have slipped, and in 
however dangerous a manner he cut himself loose from ob- 
jective Revelation, Schleiermacher was nevertheless the first 
theologian in the higher scientific sense, since he was the 
first to examine theology as a whole, and to determine in 
his way her position in the organism of science. That the re- 
sult of his work has nevertheless been more destructive than 



676 § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION [Div. Ill 

constructive, must be explained from the fact that he did not 
perceive that the conflict did not involve the triumph of Theol- 
ogy over Philosophy, or the victory of Philosophy over The- 
ology ; but from each side a first principle was in operation, 
which necessarily on the one side gave rise to a Philosophy 
entirely naturalistic, seconded by a religion both pantheistic 
and mystical, while in opposition to this a proper Christian 
Philosophy must needs construct its conception of the wdiole 
of science, and in this organism of science vindicate the 
honor of a theistical theology. .By this, however, the fact is 
not altered that Schleiermacher has given theology back to 
herself, has lifted her out of her degradation, has inspired her 
with new courage and self-confidence, and that in this formal 
sense even confessional theology, which may not hide the 
defeat of his epigones, owes to him the higher view-point at 
present occupied by the whole of theology, — a merit the 
tribute of gratitude for which has been paid to Schleier- 
macher by even Romish theology in more ways than one. 

It is to be regretted, however, that with the awakened 
desire to orient itself in the organism of science, theology 
has suffered so greatly from the want of self -limitation. 
The intensive power with which theology studied and dis- 
sected the content of Divine mysteries in the fourth and 
fifth centuries, partly also in the thirteenth, but more espe- 
cially still in the sixteenth century, was entirely exhausted. 
There have been many who could scarcely imagine how so 
much ado could have been made over the rjv ore ovk rjv of 
Arius, or over the " This is my body," in the conflict over the 
sacraments. Is not that which one confesses in common with 
all Christians, at least with all Protestants, of tenfold greater 
importance ? Moreover, would not the strength of resistance 
in defence of the Christian religion increase, in proportion 
as these interconfessional differences are buried deeper in the 
dust of forge tfulness ? Thus, in a sense more dangerous than 
in Calixtus' days, there arose a syncretistic reaction against 
the multiformity which, under the ordinance of God, had un- 
folded itself in the Reformation. This reaction was certain 
either to force a return to the unity of Rome, or to lead to 



Chap. V] § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION 677 

such an extinction of the conception "Christian,'' that at 
length even Buddhism becomes " Christian." It lay in the 
nature of the case that every " Union " was and could be noth- 
ing but a " machine," so that those of a more practical turn 
of mind could think of no other unity except that which 
had existed historically before multiformity came into being. 
While, on the other hand, when the conflict was interpreted 
as a defence of the good right of religion over against the 
intellect, piety had to be generalized, till at length all kinds 
of religious utterances were classed under one and the self- 
same conception. The result of this has been that a certain 
Romanizing tendency has met with a wide reception, espe- 
cially through Schleiermacher's emphasis put upon the Churchy 
which led to Romanticism on a large scale in Germany, and 
in England to High-Churchism. A second result was that 
theology, which ever pursued an arbitrary " Conception of 
Union," involuntarily entered in the Vermittelungstheologie 
upon an inclined plane in which it would readily lose all 
mastership over itself. And as another result no less, a 
third tendency appeared, which transmuted that which was 
positively Christian into the idea of the piously religious, 
and thus prepared the transition of theology into the sci- 
ence of religion. 

That this last tendency, even though it is still called 
theological, furnishes no theology, needs no further proof. 
The science of religion is an anthropological, ethnological, 
philosophical study, but is in no single respect theology. 
And when it presents itself as such at the several univer- 
sities, it plays an unworthy, because untrue, part. Ver- 
mittelungstheologie also is more and more disposed to put 
away its theological character. We desire in no way to 
minimize its value, especially in its earlier period. It has 
furnished excellent results in many ways, and in many 
respects it has brought lasting gains. But in two ways it 
has lost ground. Not perceiving that by the side of the- 
ology a Christian Philosophy was bound to arise, it has 
theologized philosophy too greatly and interpreted theology 
too philosophically. On the other hand, it has sought its 



678 § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION [Div. Ill 

point of support too one-sidedly in the mystical life of the 
emotions, and thus it has deemed itself able to dispense with 
the objective foundation in the Word of God and in the insti- 
tuted Church. By virtue of its character, therefore, it occu- 
pied no definite view-point. Chameleon-like, it has lent itself 
to all kinds of divisions into groups and individual variations. 
But it has never denied its general feature, of feeling stronger 
in its philosophical premises than in historic theology, and so 
it has preferred to turn itself irenically to the left, while it 
shrank from confessional theology as from an unwelcome 
apparition. It has also prosecuted no doubt the study of 
history, especially history of dogma, but ever with this pur- 
pose in view — viz. to dissolve it, in order presently, by the 
aid of the distinction between kernel and form, to put its 
philosophical thought into the dogma. This is the case with 
the more intellectual, while in other circles of the Vermit- 
telungstheologie the dualism between the emotional and in- 
tellectual life has come to so open a breach, that the transition 
to the school of Ritschl, which has anathematized every meta- 
physical conception, is already achieved. However widely 
spread the influence of this Vermittelungstheologie may be, 
even in Scotland and in America, now that she more and 
more deserts her objective point of support in the Holy 
Scripture, sets herself with ever greater hostility against the 
Confessional churches, and continues ever more boldly her 
method of pulverizing Christian truth, she can no longer 
be a theology in the real sense of the word, but turns of 
necessity into a philosophical and theosophical mysticism. 
However much she may assert that she still holds fast to 
Christ, it is nothing but self-deception. As history slips 
away from her and the self -testimony of the Christ, Christ 
becomes to her more and more a mere name without a con- 
crete stamp of its own, and consequently is nothing but the 
clothing of a religious idea, just such as Modernism wills it. 

It is entirely different, on the other hand, with confessional 
theology, such as the Lutheran, Reformed, and Romish the- 
ologies, which are beginning to give more frequent signs of 
life. In its confessional type it continues to bear a concrete 



Chap. V] § 106. THE PERIOD OF RESURRECTION 679 

and a real historical cliaracter, and behind this shield it is 
safe against the attack which subjectivism in the intellectual 
and mystical domain is trying to make upon the Christian 
religion. It holds an objective point of support in the 
Holy Scripture and in the dogmatic development, which 
protects it from being overwhelmed in the floods of many 
waters. And what is of greater significance still, thanks to 
this very objective-historic character, it is in less danger 
of being involuntarily annexed by philosophy. It may even 
now be prophesied, that, while modern theology fades into a 
science of religion or into a speculation, and Vermittelungs- 
theologie shallows into mysticism, or finds its grave in the 
philosophical stream, this confessional theology alone will 
maintain its position. Even now it can be observed how 
this theology will fulfil a twofold mission : first, a univer- 
sal one, viz. so to investigate the fundamental questions 
which are common to all the churches, that the radical 
difference between the consciousness of regenerate and un- 
regenerate humanity shall ever be more fully exposed to 
light; and, secondly, to raise the special form of its own 
confessional consciousness to the level of the consciousness- 
form of our age. But this confessional theology will only 
come to a peaceful process of development when the convic- 
tion shall be more universally accepted, that the radical 
difference between regenerate and unregenerate humanity 
extends across the entire domain of the higher sciences^ and 
therefore calls for two kinds of science just as soon as the 
investigation deserts the material basis and can no longer be 
constructed without the intermingling of the subjective factor. 
The exact boundary-line between Theology and Philosophy 
must not be sought between Christian Theology and panthe- 
istic or pagan Philosophy, but between a Theology and 
Philosophy, hath of which, as Keckermann already desired 
it, stand at the view-point of palingenesis. 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



[The figures given refer to pages.] 



Abelard, 658. 

^schylus, 655. 

Alcuin, 653. 

d'Alembert, 10. 

Alstedt, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 30. 

Anselm, 383. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 17, 165, 235, 236, 

238, 323, 335, 595, 657, 658. 
Aristotle, 3, 16, 124, 231, 288, 293, 

362, 408, 650, 655, 666. 
Arius, 586, 646, 676. 
Athanasius, 232, 233, 234, 646, 647. 
Augustine, 231, 236, 237, 239, 281, 

323, 335, 355, 590, 643, 647, 650. 

Bach, 68, 536. 

Bacon of Yerulam, 17. 

Bardas, 654. 

Bede, 653. 

Beethoven, 536. 

Beneke, 20. 

Bernard of Clairvaux, 658. 

Berthold, 628. 

Boeckh, 11, 194. 

Boerhave, 11. 

Bohl, 574, 575. 

Bonaventura, 17. 

Bornheim, 141. 

Brockhaus, 10. 

Buhle, 11, 18. 

Burdach, 19. 

Btisch, 18. 

Caesarius, 233. 

Calixtus, 667, 676. 

Calvin, 238, 265, 309, 323, 374, 375, 

571, 575, 622, 659, 673. 
Capella, Marcianus, 16. 
Carri^re, 521. 



Cartesius, 674. 
Cassiodorus of Seville, 16. 
Celsus, 642, 655. 
Chrysostom, 233. 
Cicero, 624, 655. 
Clarisse, 11. 
Clement, 643. 
Confusius, 151. 
Constantine, 644, 647, 674. 
Crell, 660. 

Damascene, John, 650. 
Darwin, 165, 209. 
Demosthenes, 3. 
Descartes, 669. 
Diderot, 10. 

Dionysius Areopagite, 234. 
Doedes, 631. 

Edison, 211. 

Elyot, 6, 11. 

Erasmus, 658. 

Erigena, John Scotus, 653. 

Ernesti, Johann August, 18, 19. 

Ersch, 10. 

Eschenburg, 19. 

Eusebius, 5. 

Fichte, 11, 16, 19, 20, 22, 36, 37, 99, 

133, 674. 
Erancke, 628. 
Fiirst, 60. 

Galen, 2. 
Gessner, 18, 19. 
Gladstone, 409. 
Gottschick, 628. 
Gregory of Nyssa, 234. 
Gregory the Presbyter, 232. 



681 



682 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



Gregory Nazianzus, 232, 235. 
Griiber, 10, 22. 

Hagenbach, 635. 

Harless, 635. 

Hartmann, Von, 521, 523. 

Hefter, 19. 

Hegel, 11, 16, 20, 228, 309, 310, 312, 

674. 
Hegesippus, 642. 
Heraclitus, 124, 270. 
Hesychius, 4, 5. 
Hierocles, 642. 
Hieronymus, 650. 
Hincmar, 653. 
Hodge, 318. 
Homer, 229, 655. 
Honorius III., 653. 
Horace, 655. 

Hugo of St. Victor, 16, 17. 
Hyperius, 635. 

Innocent II., 658. 
Isidore of Seville, 16. 
Isidorus Hispalensis, 653. 
Isocrates, 3. 

Jablonski, 10. 
Josephus, 622. 
Justinian I., 654. 

Kant, 19, 133, 147, 165, 288, 293, 397, 

476, 674, 675. 
Kienlen, 628. 
Kirchner, 206. 
Klugel, 11, 18. 
Koch, 116. 
Kraus, 19. 
Krug, 11. 

Laertius, Diogenes, 16. 

Leibnitz, 669. 

Locke, 674. 

Lombard, Peter, 236. 

Lubbock, Sir John, 102. 

Lucien, 231. 

Luther, 281, 398, 659, 662, 673. 

Maccovius, 388. 
Martinius, Mathias, 7, 9, 10. 
Martyr, Justin, 232, 233. 
Maurus, Hrabanus, 16, 653. 



Meyer, 10, 
Moor, de, 238, 256. 
Mozart, 211, 263, 536. 
Mursinna, 11. 

Napoleon, 673. 
Naumann, 536. 

Origen, 5, 362, 643, 644, 650, 653. 

Pachy meres, 234. 

Philalaos, 126. 

Philostorgius, 233. 

Photius, 234, 650, 654. 

Pierer, 10. 

Planck, 635. 

Plato, 13, 14, 16, 17, 124, 203, 229, 

230, 231, 362, 408, 420, 650, 655, 

656. 
Pliny, 2, 16. 
Plutarch, 124, 127, 231. 
Porphyry, 642, 655. 
Pythagoras, 126. 

Quadratus, 642. 
Quintilian, 3, 4, 6, 13, 14. 

Rabiger, 45, 52, 635. 
Ramus, Peter, 9, 293. 
Raphael, 68. 
Reimarus, 18. 
Reisch, 7. 
Reuss, 11. 
Ringelberg, 7. 
Ritschl, 678. 
Ruef, 11. 
Runze, 2. 

Scala, Paulus de, 7, 10, 

Scalichius, Paul, 5. 

Schaller, 19. 

Schelling, 20, 674. 

Schleiermacher, 228, 240, 242,309,310. 

311, 313, 314, 627, 675, 676, 677. 
Schmid, Erhard, 11, 19. 
Socrates, 124, 656. 
Solon, .124. 
Spencer, 250. 
Speusippus, 16. 
Spinoza, 674, 699. 
Staudlin, 635. 
Strabo, 4. 



INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 



683 



Suicer, 5, 231, 232, 234. 
Suidas, 10. 
Sultzer, 19. 

Tasche, 20. 
Thales, 124. 
Theodoret, 234. 
Theophylact, 235. 
Tholosanus, Gregorius, 9. 
Tittman, 20. 

Varro, 16, 237. 

Veronicas, Eranciscus, 587. 

Vincent of Beauvais, 16, 17. 



Virgil, 655. 
Vitruvius, 4. 
Vives, Louis de, 17. 
Voetius, 564, 587, 622. 

Woltjer, 194. 
Wower, 9. 

Xenophon, 124. 

Zedler, 10. 
Zezschwitz, 637. 
Zonaras, 5. 
Zwingli, 661. 



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